IN  MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


JOSEPHINE   SHAW   LOWELL 


AUGUSTUS     SAINT    G  A  I '  I)  I    N  S 


IN     MEMOR1AM 

JOSEPHINE 

SHAW 

LOWELL 


ROBERT  W.  DE  FOREST 

JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE 

WILLIAM  R.  STEWART 

FELIX  ADLER 

JAMES  O.  S.  HUNTINGTON 

JACOB  A.  RIIS 

SETH  LOW 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER 

EDWARD  T.  DEVINE 

MAUD  NATHAN 

JOHN  B.  DEVINS 

AND  MANY  OTHERS 


THE    CHARITY    ORGANIZATION    SOCIETY 

OF    THE    CITY    OF    NEW    YORK 

M    C    M    V    I 


REPRINTED  IN  PART 
FROM 

"CHARITIES  AND  THE  COMMONS' 

DECEMBER    2,    1905 


THE    CHARITY    ORGANIZATION    SOCIETY 
OF   THE    CITY    OF    NEW    YORK 


CONTENTS 

BAS-RELIEF. — AUGUSTUS  ST.  GAUDENS      Frontispiece 

BIOGRAPHICAL vn 

THE  MEMORIAL  MEETING 
Addresses  by 
Robert  W.  de  Forest  ....      3 

Felix  Adler 7 

Father  Huntington      .  .         .         .11 

William  Rhinelander  Stewart      .         .        .15 

Joseph  H.  Choate 26 

Jacob  A.  Riis 34 

Seth  Low 38 

OTHER  CONTRIBUTIONS 41 

Mrs.  Lowell's  Services  to  the  State. — Edward 
T.  Devine 43 

Mrs.  Lowell  and  the  unemployed — Organizing 
the  East  Side  Relief  Work  Committee. — 
John  Bancroft  Devins  .  .  .  .  52 

Mrs.  Lowell  and  The  Consumers'  League. — 
Maud  Nathan 59 

Mrs.  Lowell  and  The  New  York  Charity  Or- 
ganization Society 63 

[v] 


M187139 


CONTENTS 

MEMORIAL  VERSE 69 

A    Woman    of   Sorrows.— Richard    Watson 

Gilder 71 

The  Service  Tree. — John  Finley    .        .        -73 

A  City's  Saint. — Joseph  Dana  Miller    .        .  74 

In  Memoriam. — Mary  Lowe  Dickinson  .        .  76 

FROM  MANY  SOURCES 77 

TYPICAL    SELECTIONS    FROM    MRS.   LOWELL'S 

OFFICIAL  REPORTS  AND  WRITINGS     .        .  95 

PARTIAL  LIST   OF   MRS.    LOWELL'S   WRITINGS  99 


[vi] 


BIOGRAPHICAL 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


BIOGRAPHICAL 


T  OSEPHINE  SHAW  was  born  at  West  Roxbury, 
Massachusetts,  December  16,  1843.  Her  father 
was  Francis  George  Shaw  who  gave  to  his 
J  daughter  an  inheritance  of  character,  some  con- 
ception of  which  may  be  gathered  from  Mr.  Choate's 
address  at  the  memorial  meeting.  From  seven  to 
twelve  years  of  age,  with  her  parents,  brother  and 
three  sisters,  she  lived  in  Europe,  attending  school  at 
Paris  and  in  a  convent  at  Rome,  and  gaining  a  mas- 
tery of  French,  Italian  and  German.  After  her  re- 
turn she  was  in  school  one  year  in  New  York  and 
one  year  in  Boston.  She  was  married  to  Charles 
Russell  Lowell  at  her  father's  home  on  Staten 
Island,  on  October  31,  1863. 

On  October  19,  1864,  almost  exactly  one  year 
after  their  marriage,  her  husband,  while  serving 
under  General  Sheridan,  was  killed  at  the  battle  of 
Cedar  Creek.  Mrs.  Lowell's  brother,  Robert  Gould 
Shaw,  organized  the  first  Negro  regiment,  the  Fifty- 
fourth  Massachusetts,  and  was  killed  while  leading 
them  in  the  assault  on  Fort  Wagner.  A  bas-relief, 
by  St.  Gaudens,  on  Boston  Common,  appropriately 
commemorates  this  notable  incident  of  the  war,  and 
the  same  artist's  relief  portrait  of  Mrs.  Lowell  is 
reproduced  as  the  frontispiece  of  this  volume  through 
the  kindness  of  her  daughter.  Mrs.  Lowell's  death 
occurred  at  her  home  in  New  York  City  on  October 
12,  1905.  The  funeral  services  were  conducted  by 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Huntington,  of  Grace  Church,  and  her 

[ix] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

mortal  remains  were  interred  by  the  side  of  her 
husband  in  Mount  Auburn  Cemetery. 

The  addresses  at  the  memorial  meeting,  held  in 
the  United  Charities  Building,  the  evening  of  Novem- 
ber 13,  1905,  together  with  the  accompanying  con- 
tributions, dwell  at  length,  but  by  no  means  exhaus- 
tively, on  the  more  considerable  events  of  her  life. 

Robert  W.  de  Forest  was  chairman  of  the  meeting, 
and  the  speakers  included  Dr.  Felix  Adler,  leader  of 
the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture;  the  Rev.  J.  O.  S. 
Huntington,  Jacob  A.  Riis,  Joseph  H.  Choate, 
former  ambassador  to  England,  and  Seth  Low, 
former  mayor  of  New  York. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Low,  seconded  by  Richard 
Watson  Gilder,  it  was  decided  by  unanimous  vote 
of  those  present  that  a  committee  be  appointed  to 
establish  a  memorial  to  Mrs.  Lowell.  Various 
suggestions  have  been  made  as  to  the  form  of  this 
memorial. 

In  pursuance  of  the  resolution  adopted,  the  fol- 
lowing committee  was  appointed : 

HON.  SETH  Low,  CHAIRMAN  THOMAS  M.  MULRY 

B.  OGDEN  CHISOLM,  SECRETARY  MRS.  FREDERICK  NATHAN 

HERBERT  ADAMS  E.  W.  ORDWAY 

PROF.  FELIX  ADLER  JAMES  K.  PAULDING 

OTTO  T.  BANNARD  GEORGE  FOSTER  PEA  BODY 

JOSEPH  BARONDESS  RIGHT  REV.  HENRY  C. 

CHARLES  C.  BURLINGHAM  POTTER,  D.D. 

NICHOLAS  MURRAY  BUTLER,  MRS.  JOSEPH  M.  PRICE 

Miss  MARGARET  L.  CHANLER  J.  HAMPDEN  ROBB 

R.  FULTON  CUTTING  AUGUSTUS  ST.  GAUDENS 

ROBERT  W.  DE  FOREST  MRS.  WILLIAM  H.  SCHIEFFELIN 

REV.  W.  T.  ELSING  JACOB  H.  SCHIFF 

R.  W.  GILDER  HON.  CARL  SCHURZ  * 

EDWARD  C.  HENDERSON  Miss  LOUISA  L.  SCHUYLER 

REV.  J.  O.  S.  HUNTINGTON  JAMES  SPEYER 

REV.  WM.  R.  HUNTINGTON,  D.D.        HON.  WM.  R.  STEWART 

Miss  ANNIE  B.  JENNINGS  J.  G.  PHELPS  STOKES 

MRS.  FREDERIC  S.  LEE  Miss  LILLIAN  D.  WALD 

HON.  GEORGE  B.  MCCLELLAN  Miss  ELIZABETH  S.  WILLIAMS 

*  Since  deceased. 


THE   MEMORIAL   MEETING 

NOVEMBER  13,  1905 

UNITED  CHARITIES  BUILDING 

NEW  YORK 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


ROBERT  W.  DE  FOREST 


WE  have  met  to-night  in  memory  of  a  noble 
woman — a  woman  whom  we  all  honor 
for  what  she  did  and  whom  we  all  love 
for  what  she  was.     I  know  of  no  one  of 
the  present  generation  in  our  city  and  state  who 
has  been  a  more  potent  force  for  social  uplift  than 

iosephine  Shaw  Lowell.  I  know  of  no  one  who 
as  been  so  beloved  and  whose  memory  will  be  so 
tenderly  cherished  by  "  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men."  Whatever  inequalities  there  be  among 
those  who  are  assembled  here — whether  of  station, 
or  learning  or  opportunity — we  are  here  on  an  equal 
plane  of  friendship  for  her;  man  to  man,  and  woman 
to  woman. 

Mrs.  Lowell's  activities  for  her  fellow  men  cover 
the  whole  range  of  humanitarian  effort. 

The  Charity  Organization  Society,  of  which  she 
was  the  founder  and  whose  councils  she  guided 
for  more  than  twenty-three  years,  the  State  Chari- 
ties Aid  Association,  of  which  she  became  an  active 
member  in  1873,  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  of 
which  she  was  the  first  woman  member,  appointed 
by  Governor  Tilden  in  1876,  the  Outdoor  Recre- 
ation League,  are  only  a  few  of  the  organizations 
with  which  she  has  been  connected  on  the  more 
strictly  charitable  side.  On  the  more  political  side 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

of  this  effort  are  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Associ- 
ation, the  Woman's  Municipal  League,  the  Consum- 
ers' League,  the  Philippine  Progress  Association 
and  many  others. 

Among  the  many  movements  with  which  she 
has  been  identified,  and  in  which  she  bore  a  leading 
part,  are  the  separation  of  charities  and  corrections, 
state  reformatories  for  women,  state  custodial  care 
for  adult  idiots,  state  asylums  for  feeble-minded 
women  and  girls  of  child-bearing  age,  the  abolition 
of  police  lodgings  in  New  York  and  the  establishment 
of  municipal  lodging-houses  for  men,  opposition  to 
institutionalism  in  the  care  of  dependent  children, 
placing  matrons  in  all  police-stations,  relief  by 
work  during  the  stress  winter  of  180,4,  industrial 
conciliation,  suppression  of  the  social  evil,  and 
almost  every  phase  of  the  Philippine  question. 

I  know  of  more  than  forty  published  books  or 
papers  on  these  and  kindred  subjects  which  she  has 
written. 

But  the  enumeration  of  every  organization  or 
movement  in  which  she  took  part — usually  the 
leading  part — and  a  complete  list  of  everything  she 
ever  wrote,  would  give  no  adequate  measure  of  the 
part  she  has  played  in  social  progress  during  the 
past  forty  years. 

It  was  hers  not  merely  to  do  but  to  inspire  others 
to  do.  She  was  pre-eminently  a  quickening  spirit. 
She  breathed  the  breath  of  life  into  others.  She 
was  a  spur — frequently  an  uncomfortably  pricking 
spur — to  the  laggard.  She  was  a  standard-bearer, 
always  an  inspiring  standard-bearer  to  those  who 
tried  to  lead. 

Mrs.  Lowell  was  every  inch  a  woman.  Unlike 
most  woman  who  have  sought  to  be,  or  who  have 

[4] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

been,  actors  in  public  affairs,  she  never  for  one 
instant  yielded  a  particle  of  her  woman's  charm  or 
of  her  woman's  tenderness.  With  the  strength  and 
courage  of  a  man,  she  never  hesitated  to  strike, 
and  strike  hard  when  duty  called  to  strike,  but  her 
woman's  gentle  touch  bound  up  the  wounds  and  the 
blow  left  no  sting  behind. 

What  must  it  have  been  to  her  hero  husband  to 
have  the  love  of  such  a  woman,  even  for  a  few  short 
months! 

Those  who  have  known  her  in  later  years  have 
caught  some  penumbra  of  that  greater  light.  It 
would  have  been  a  privilege  for  some  of  us  to  have 
placed  ourselves  among  the  poor  and  lowly,  so 
that  we  might  go  to  her  as  they  could  do,  and  thus 
gain  for  ourselves  a  brighter  ray. 

In  her  dealings  with  others  Mrs.  Lowell  was 
absolutely  sincere.  She  spoke  out  all  she  thought. 
She  held  back  nothing  of  the  truth  as  she  saw  it. 
No  consideration  of  policy  ever  weighed  with  her — 
she  would  have  thought  policy  inconsistent  with 
truthfulness.  Herein  was  one  of  the  greatest  charms 
of  intercourse  with  her.  Herein,  perhaps,  was  her 
greatest  source  of  strength. 

How  she  could  be  affected  by  any  course  of  action 
on  her  part  never  entered  her  mind.  She  was 
absolutely  unselfish.  Those  of  us  who  have,  perhaps, 
successfully  resisted  the  temptation  of  selfishness  can 
claim  a  merit  to  which  she  never  attained,  for  she 
was  incapable  of  being  so  tempted. 

Had  Mrs.  Lowell  lived  in  mediaeval  times  she 
would  long  since  have  been  canonized  as  a  saint. 
Had  she  lived  at  a  still  earlier  period  in  our  Christ- 
ian era  she  would  have  been  among  the  martyrs. 
But,  living  as  she  did  in  our  times,  she  suffered 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

more  than  forty  years  ago  the  cruelest  martyrdom 
that  could  ever  befall  a  wife  and  sister,  and  whether 
because  of  that  martyrdom,  or  rather,  as  I  think,  in 
spite  of  it,  because  she  was  herself,  she  has  for  all 
these  succeeding  years  emanated  that  intense 
sympathy  for  all  human  kind,  and  particularly  for 
all  human  kind  that  needs  and  suffers,  which  ancient 
art,  for  want  of  better  vehicle,  has  pictured  with 
the  halo. 


[6] 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


FELIX  ADLER 


WE  meet  together  to-night  as  those  who 
have  suffered  a  common  bereavement.  I 
believe  that  if  it  had  been  deemed  wise 
to  select  the  Cooper  Institute  for  this 
meeting,  the  Cooper  Institute  would  have  been  filled 
to  overflowing.  The  first  citizens  of  the  state  and 
the  laboring  people  would  there  have  united  in  pay- 
ing homage  to  the  memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell. 

It  seems  almost  incredible  that  she  has  gone  from 
us.  But  a  few  months  ago  she  took  counsel  with 
us,  and  was  actively  interested  in  all  reform  move- 
ments. We  had  no  warning  of  the  peril.  Of  a 
sudden  she  has  disappeared  from  our  mortal  view, 
and  our  coming  together  here  to-night  is  the  first 
opportunity  that  many  of  us  have  to  exchange 
comments  and  to  jointly  express  our  feelings  about 
what  we  have  lost. 

I  can  only  say  that  the  city  of  New  York  seems 
to  me  to  be  a  less  noble  city  to  live  in,  now  that  I 
can  no  longer  associate  it  with  the  presence  of  this 
noble  woman.  If  I  may  be  permitted  to  say  so,  I 
have  much  the  same  feeling  about  her  that  I  had 
about  Mr.  Baldwin.  The  city  we  live  in  is  not, 
after  all,  a  city  of  houses  and  streets;  but  the  city 
means  for  us  the  women  and  men  who  live  in  it, 
the  ideals  that  exist  in  it,  the  touch  of  nobility  we 

[7] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

experience  in  it;  and  when  such  a  person  as  Mrs. 
Lowell  goes,  the  city  is  so  far  depreciated  for  us. 
And  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  the  very  object  of  this 
meeting  is  that  this  shall  not  be  the  case;  and  that 
while  she  is  withdrawn  from  our  earthly  walks  and 
sight,  we  shall  continue  to  sanctify  the  city  by  a 
permanent  memorial  of  her;  and  above  all  by  having 
a  care  that  the  value  of  her  life  shall  not  be  lost  for 
us,  by  making  sure  that  the  memorial,  at  all  events, 
shall  be  erected  in  our  individual  spirits. 

I  do  not  think  that  we  meet  here  to-day  to  do  her 
honor,  she  is  past  receiving  honor  at  our  hands;  we 
come  here  to  do  something  for  ourselves,  not  for  her; 
to  see  to  it  that  the  advantage  and  profit  of  that 
life  shall  not  be  lost  for  us.  I  think  we  can  do  that 
best  and  in  the  simplest  way  by  each  of  us  taking 
thought,  and  quietly  and  with  a  holy  feeling  look- 
ing up  to  her  as  if  she  were  present  with  us  at  this 
moment,  and  fixing  in  our  minds  the  lineaments  of 
her  spiritual  self. 

It  seems  to  me  that  of  the  living  we  have  but 
inadequate  portraits.  We  see  them  at  different 
times,  in  different  relations,  in  different  aspects; 
but  perhaps  we  never  have  the  mental  quiet  and 
occasion  to  combine  these  portraits,  to  combine 
them  as  the  artist  would,  and  to  fashion  a  portrait 
true  to  the  character.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
advantage  and  purpose  of  a  memorial  meeting  is 
that  we  shall  add  this  portrait  to  our  mental  picture 
gallery.  Each  of  us  on  the  platform  will  endeavor 
to  contribute  something  to  the  fashioning  of  that 
portrait;  and  then  we  shall  take  it  with  us  and  keep 
it  in  holy  memory  and  consider  it  in  quiet  moments, 
and  think  of  her  as  she  was  to  us. 

I  have  always  had  a  reverential  feeling  toward 

[8] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Mrs.  Lowell.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  never  ap- 
proached her  without  hearing  the  words,  "Take  of? 
the  shoes  from  thy  feet,  for  the  ground  thou  ap- 
proachest  is  holy  ground."  Whether  it  was  the 
unconscious  idealizing  influence  of  that  sorrow  of 
which  she  never  spoke,  or  whether  it  was  some- 
thing else — her  charm,  her  sweet  dignity,  her  simplic- 
ity, the  sense  of  close  human  relations  with  the 
poorest  and  humblest  human  beings,  and  at  the 
same  time  a  sense  of  elevation  above  the  strongest 
and  most  capable  of  those  who  approached  her — 
whatever  may  have  been  the  secret  of  the  influence, 
it  was  above  all  the  personality  which  counted. 
And  if  I  am  to  express  in  a  few  words  what  in 
particular  seemed  to  me  the  peculiar  nature  of  her 
life,  apart  from  this  indefinable  and  unanalyzable 
sense  of  a  lofty  personality,  so  near  as  to  be  near  the 
lowliest  and  so  high  and  strong  as  to  be  above  the 
strongest  and  most  competent,  I  should  say  it  was 
in  her  case  the  effect  of  the  harmony  of  opposites. 
She  was  an  idealist  of  the  purest  kind.  And  yet 
she  was  always  the  most  practical  of  realists.  The 
partial  list  which  Mr.  de  Forest  has  read  to  us  is 
evidence  of  that  practical  realism,  that  strong 
common  sense  and  sagacity  which  distinguished 
her  in  every  movement  in  which  she  took  part. 
She  was  a  harmonizer  of  the  ideal  and  the  realistic. 
She  was  a  harmonizer  of  opposites.  She  was  an 
intense  enthusiast  for  certain  causes.  Above  all, 
she  dwelt  with  motherly  sympathy — with  the  mother- 
hood that  embraces  all  mankind,  she  dwelt  upon 
the  sufferings  and  the  miseries  of  the  world.  But 
more  than  by  the  sufferings  and  the  miseries  of 
the  world  was  she  touched  by  its  wrongs.  It 
was  injustice  in  any  form  that  called  out  her  keenest 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

feeling.  It  was  this  that  made  her  for  so  long  a 
time,  with  but  a  few  others,  the  only  support  of  the 
movement  in  this  country  for  justice  to  the  Filipino 
people.  And  yet,  despite  her  capacity  for  right- 
eous indignation,  she  was  never  one-sided.  I 
could  not  say  at  this  moment,  truthfully,  that  she 
was  on  the  side  of  the  Filipinos,  that  she  took  the 
side  of  the  Filipinos;  nor  could  I  say  truthfully 
that  she  took  the  side  of  the  laboring  people,  for  the 
reason  that  she  also  felt  so  genuinely  and  intensely 
how  cruel  the  oppressor  is  to  himself.  If  ever  any- 
one loved  the  wrongdoer  it  was  Mrs.  Lowell  when 
she  protested  against  his  wrongdoing. 

Longfellow  has  shown  us  in  one  of  his  poems  how 
Florence  Nightingale  visited  the  beds  of  the  sick  at 
Scutari,  and  how  they  loved  her  for  coming  to  them, 
and  how  they  thought  of  her  as  the  Lady  of  the 
Lamp.  I  think  of  Mrs.  Lowell  also  as  the  Lady  of 
the  Lamp.  Mr.  de  Forest  said  that  many  envied 
the  poor  for  the  ray  she  cast  into  their  life;  may 
I  add  that  no  one  had  need  to  be  poor  to  have  the 
blessed  touch  of  that  ray. 

Among  many  others,  I  am  here  to-night  to  ex- 
press gratitude  for  the  ray  she  cast  into  my  life, 
the  ray  of  a  true,  spiritual  presence,  of  fine  Ameri- 
can womanhood,  and  of  noble  humanity.  She 
was  the  Lady  of  the  Lamp  for  many  of  us.  She 
carried  aloft  the  lamp  of  hope  and  of  pity  and  of  a 
beautiful  faith  in  us  all,  in  all  humanity. 


•o] 


IN  MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE   SHAW   LOWELL 


FATHER  HUNTINGTON 


IT  was  my  great  privilege  to  know  Mrs.  Lowell, 
and  I  should  have  been  grateful  for  an  oppor- 
tunity to  speak  out  of  the  fulness  of  my  own 
appreciation  of  her  character. 
But  in  this  instance  I  speak  not  only  for  myself, 
but  for  a  large  number  of  other  persons  who  cannot 
otherwise  express  themselves;  persons  who   I   am 
sure  feel  a  very  deep  affection  and  love  for  Mrs. 
Lowell,  and  who  would  fain  find  some  utterance  in 
this  meeting  gathered  in  her  honor  and  praise;  and 
then,  too,  I  take  the  place  of  one  who  would  be  far 
better  fitted  to  speak  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  place  in  the 
industrial  world,  and  above  all  in  the  ranks  of  the 
wage-working  women — Mrs.  Kelley. 

Memory  goes  back  at  once  to  what  she  was  to  a 
large  boay  of  young  women  in  this  city  in  the 
feather  workers' strike;  and  when  I  speak  that  word, 
I  speak  a  word  that  rings  of  contention,  of  oppos- 
ing interests,  and  perhaps  of  violent  antagonism;  a 
word  that  is  likely  to  be  felt  as  a  hostile  word  by 
some  people  who  are  here.  And  yet  I  must  say, 
quite  frankly,  that  I  have  never  been  able  to  under- 
stand how  the  moral  side  of  a  strike — perhaps  its 
moral  greatness — can  be  so  ignored  by  generous 
men  and  women. 

[  ii  1 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Consider  what  it  means.  However  mistaken  men 
or  women  may  be,  however  foolish  their  effort,  is 
there  not  something  magnificent  in  seeing  those  who 
have  work  and  are  supporting  their  families,  giving 
up  their  chance  of  earning  a  living,  surrendering 
their  positions,  and  beggaring  themselves,  in  the 
hope  of  securing  for  those  who  are  less  fortunate, 
those  who  have  no  employment,  or  those  who  are 
poorly  paid — more  poorly  paid  than  themselves — 
of  securing  for  them  fairer  treatment  and  juster  pay  ? 

Any  student  of  sociology  knows  that  strikes  begin 
with  the  best  paid  workmen;  and  yet  these  often 
know  quite  well  that  they  will  receive  no  real  sup- 
port from  their  fellow  workers,  for  whom  they  strug- 
gle; that  for  any  hardship  they  endure  they  will  re- 
ceive no  sympathy  from  those  in  whose  interests 
they  enter  upon  what  is  often  a  desperate  and  hope- 
less endeavor. 

And  yet  that  has  been  done  in  strike  after  strike. 
In  the  beginning  of  a  hard  winter,  in  the  face  of  hard 
times,  men  and  women  have  given  up  the  chance  of 
earning  money,  have  struggled  on  in  poverty  and 
hunger  because  they  had  a  principle  at  stake.  Is 
there  not  something  commendable — something  ad- 
mirable in  that  ? 

Make  what  criticism  you  will  upon  their  ignorance 
and  their  methods,  there  is  moral  force  there  that 
comes  out  in  almost  every  such  struggle.  How  is  it 
that  those  whose  hearts  thrill  at  the  high  examples 
of  heroic  endeavor  of  the  past,  cannot  see  the  beauty 
of  this  self-sacrifice  in  these  men  and  these  women 
of  their  own  times  ? 

Mrs.  Lowell  did  see  this,  and  she  acted  accord- 
ingly. She  was  as  quick  as  any  one  to  see  the  futil- 
ity of  many  of  the  efforts  of  working  people  and  the 

[  12] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ignorance  that  exists  among  them;  but  she  saw 
deeper  than  that,  and  felt  intense  sympathy  with 
that  which  was  noble  and  'true  in  the  hard  struggle. 

So  she  came  forward  in  this  strike  of  the  feather 
workers  as  naturally  and  simply  as  she  took  her 
part  in  other  efforts  and  movements.  She  did  not 
offer  patronage;  that  word  is  inconsistent  with  our 
memory  of  her.  She  did  not  come  playing  the  part 
of  Lady  Bountiful,  that  half-pathetic,  half-romantic 
figure.  She  came  in  her  own  natural  way.  She  did 
not  attempt  to  lay  aside  the  advantages  of  the  po- 
sition that  belonged  to  her;  she  did  not  try  to  trans- 
port herself  into  their  conditions;  there  was  nothing 
unreal  or  unnatural  in  her  or  her  work.  She  came  to 
the  work  with  her  clear  intellect  and  her  generous 
heart;  and  how  she  did  put  strength  into  those  who 
were  working  under  almost  desperate  odds;  how  she 
lifted  up  the  cause;  how  she  saw  the  amusing  and  the 
humorous  side  of  affairs;  how  she  would  point  it  out, 
while  feeling  at  the  same  time  the  pathos  and  the 
tragedy;  and  how,  with  the  buoyancy  of  her  life,  she 
carried  all  along  with  her! 

Later  on  I  remember  meeting  her  during  the  gar- 
ment cutters'  strike,  that  strike  where  all  parties 
wanted  the  result  aimed  at,  and  where  the  sem- 
blance of  battle  was  kept  up  only  in  order  to  bring 
advantage  to  all  concerned.  I  remember  how  dur- 
ing those  times  she  told  me  of  meeting  a  boy  on  Sun- 
day with  a  big  bundle  of  garments  over  his  shoulders, 
and  asking  him,  "Is  your  father  going  to  strike?" 
And  his  reply,  "Yep,  Pop's  going  to  strike  so  the 
bosses  can  give  us  better  wages."  It  was  her  own 
personality,  her  going  from  place  to  place  and  hold- 
ing the  men  steady  when  their  children  were  crying 
with  hunger,  that  carried  the  strike  through, to  the 

[  13] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

immense  relief  of  manufacturer,  sweater  and  sweated 
alike. 

And  in  the  different  phases  of  her  activity  of  one 
form  or  another  in  connection  with  the  industrial 
situation,  she  never  arrayed  herself  on  one  side  as 
against  the  other.  It  was  most  characteristic  in 
this  strike  of  the  garment  cutters  that  every  one  of 
the  three  parties  to  it  came  to  her,  expecting  her  to 
sympathize  with  them,  as  she  did.  She  saw  the 
situation  from  every  point  of  view,  and  was  able  to 
weld  into  one  those  various  elements  which  brought 
success. 

That  is  all  I  can  say.  It  will  suggest  something 
of  what  her  presence  meant,  of  hope,  light  and  joy. 
I  never  met  her  but  I  had  a  better  hope  for  the  Re- 
public. I  felt  this  was  a  better  world  because  of 
having  her  sympathy,  because  of  her  friendship,  and 
because  of  what  she  was. 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


WILLIAM  RHINELANDER  STEWART 


YOU  have  asked  me  to  say  a  few  words  respect- 
ing Mrs.  Lowell's  work  as  a  commissioner 
of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  and  I 
gladly  comply  with  your  request. 
Mrs.  Lowell  was  appointed  to  membership  on  the 
board  by  Governor  Tilden  in  1876,  and  was  the 
board's  first  woman  commissioner.  When  she  took 
her  seat  on  June  8th  of  that  year,  the  board  of  eleven 
members  was  presided  over  by  John  V.  L.  Pruyn  of 
Albany,  then  also  chancellor  of  the  University. 
With  him  in  welcoming  the  new  commissioner  were 
Theodore  Roosevelt,  father  of  our  president,  and 
Henry  L.  Hoguet,  of  New  York  city,  A.  A.  Low  of 
Brooklyn,  Martin  B.  Anderson  of  Rochester,  and 
William  P.  Letchworth  of  Buffalo,  of  whom  only 
the  venerable  Mr.  Letchworth  now  survives.  What 
a  pleasure  it  must  have  been  to  Mrs.  Lowell  to  work 
in  such  company!  Mrs.  Lowell  was  soon  assigned  to 
her  full  share  of  service  and  forthwith  took  a  leading 
position  in  the  board.  All  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  work 
was  extremely  practical  and  aimed  at  securing  im- 
mediate results. 

She  at  once  began  a  series  of  inspections  to  inform 
herself  of  the  condition  and  needs  of  the  state  insti- 
tutions to  which  her  committee  assignments  sent 
her,  and  of  the  public  charities  of  New  York  city. 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Early  in  1877,  Mrs.  Lowell  was  appointed  a  mem- 
ber of  a  special  committee  of  three  to  inquire  into 
the  affairs  of  the  New  York  Juvenile  Guardian  So- 
ciety, a  private  charity  of  New  York  city,  in  the 
management  of  which  abuses  were  found  to  exist. 
The  committee  inspected  the  buildings  of  the  so- 
ciety and  subsequently  subpoenaed  its  officers  and 
others  to  appear  and  give  testimony.  Some  at- 
tended and  were  examined.  The  officers  thereupon 
objected  to  the  examination,  denied  the  right  of  the 
committee  to  subpoena  witnesses,  demanded  that 
specific  charges  be  made,  and  claimed  the  right  of 
appearing  by  counsel  and  cross-examining  witnesses. 
The  committee  over-ruled  these  objections,  contin- 
ued the  investigation,  and  reported  the  testimony 
and  the  facts  to  the  board  on  March  7,  1877.  The 
society  then  brought  an  action  against  the  committee 
in  the  court  of  common  pleas,  requesting  the  court 
by  injunction  to  restrain  the  committee  from  pub- 
lishing their  report,  and  from  holding  any  investiga- 
tion of  the  affairs  of  the  society,  unless  it  could 
appear  by  counsel  and  cross-examine. 

The  matter  came  up  before  Charles  P.  Daly, 
chief  justice,  June  15,  1877.  Francis  C.  Barlow, 
brother-in-law  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  and  doubtless  brought 
into  the  case  by  her  influence,  appeared  for  the  com- 
mittee. Chief  Justice  Daly  delivered  an  elaborate 
opinion,  fully  sustaining  the  position  of  the  com- 
mittee. Mrs.  Lowell's  personal  efforts  no  doubt  con- 
tributed largely  to  this  important  result. 

In  the  fall  of  1877,  she  joined  with  commissioners 
Roosevelt  and  Donnelly  in  a  strong  report  to  Mayor 
Smith  Ely  calling  his  attention  to  the  need  of  the 
public  charities  of  this  city  for  larger  appropriations 
and  better  management,  and  this  was  followed  by 

[  16] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

a  similar  appeal  to  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Ap- 
portionment. 

In  December,  1877,  Mrs.  Lowell  joined  with  Mr. 
Roosevelt  in  calling  the  attention  of  the  mayor  and 
Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  to  the  over- 
crowded conditions  of  the  asylums  for  the  insane, 
then  subject  to  the  visitation  and  inspection  of  the 
board,  and  in  recommending  the  establishment  of 
a  new  asylum  for  the  chronic  insane  and  the  en- 
actment of  a  law  to  authorize  the  city  to  acquire 
land  outside  the  city  limits  for  a  new  insane  asylum. 

The  movement  thus  begun  was  persevered  in  by 
Mrs.  Lowell  and  others  with  successive  mayors  ana 
boards,  until,  under  the  presidency  of  Mr.  Letch- 
worth,  who,  although  residing  near  Buffalo,  had 
given  his  earnest  and  intelligent  support,  the  Board 
of  Estimate  and  apportionment  of  1883  inserted  an 
item  of  $25,000  for  the  purchase  of  a  farm  for  the 
chronic  insane.  Thus  was  established  what  is  now 
the  Central  Islip  State  Hospital,  at  Central  Islip, 
Long  Island,  which  on  the  8th  of  this  month  reported 
a  census  of  3,5 52  inmates. 

The  inspections  which  Mrs.  Lowell  made  shortly 
after  she  became  a  commissioner  of  the  State  Board 
of  Charities,  of  the  city  and  county  institutions 
where,  among  other  public  dependents,  many  young 
women,  either  feeble-minded  or  delinquents,  were 
received  and  cared  for,  convinced  her  of  the  need  of 
more  specialized  care  and  better  supervision  than 
they  were  then  receiving  in  those  institutions. 
After  consideration  of  the  problem,  she  began  a  cam- 
paign for  the  removal  from  these  institutions  of  all 
such  women.  The  board  through  a  special  com- 
mittee, of  which  Mrs.  Lowell  was  chairman,  labored 
to  secure  from  the  legislature  an  appropriation  for 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

the  establishment  of  a  custodial  asylum  for  the 
feeble-minded  women  of  this  class.  At  a  meeting  of 
the  board,  held  on  June  13,  1878,  Mrs.  Lowell  sub- 
mitted a  report  which  stated  that  the  efforts  to  se- 
cure an  appropriation  from  the  legislature  for  this 
had  been  successful,  and  that  an  appropriation  of 
$18,000  had  been  made.  With  this  appropriation, 
which  was  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  board  of 
managers  of  the  institution,  then  known  as  the 
State  Idiot  Asylum  at  Syracuse,  the  society  for  the 
custodial  care  of  feeble-minded  women  was  opened 
at  Newark,  in  Wayne  County,  and  the  work 
begun. 

Mrs.  Lowell  continued  her  active  interest  in  state 
supervision  for  the  care  of  women  of  this  class,  and 
after  several  years  of  work  had  the  satisfaction  of 
aiding  in  the  passage  of  Chapter  281  of  the  Laws  of 
1885,  which  incorporated  as  a  separate  state  insti- 
tution "The  Asylum  established  by  the  State  Board 
of  Charities  at  Newark,  Wayne  County,  for  Feeble- 
minded Women/' 

By  this  initiative  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  there  was  begun 
what  is  now  the  great  State  Custodial  Asylum  for 
Feeble-minded  Women,  at  Newark,  which  performs 
a  most  useful  and  important  work  for  its  unfor- 
tunate inmates  and  for  the  people  of  this  state. 
It  now  has  an  inmate  population  of  nearly  six  hun- 
dred, and  should  in  the  relatively  near  future  give 
protection  to  at  least  a  thousand  feeble-minded 
women. 

When  Mrs.  Lowell  became  a  member  of  the  board 
there  was  no  reformatory  for  women  in  the  state. 
Unfortunate  or  vicious  young  women  were  found  in 
large  numbers  in  the  county  poorhouses,  county 
jails  and  penitentiaries.  The  conditions  in  these 

[  18] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

institutions  were  not  such  as  to  provide  these  young 
women  with  the  training  and  discipline  necessary  to 
their  reformation.  Mrs.  Lowell,  continuing  her  ef- 
forts, presented  the  following  resolution  at  a  meeting 
of  the  board  held  in  March,  1881,  which  was  unani- 
mously adopted: 

Resolved,  That  the  State  Board  of  Charities  recommend 
that  the  legislature  establish  an  institution  for  the  custody 
and  discipline  of  vagrant  and  disorderly  women  under  the 
charge  of  officers  of  their  own  sex. 

Thereupon,  under  Mrs.  Lowell's  active  and 
persistent  leadership,  began  the  movement  which 
led  to  the  establishment  in  1881  of  the  House  of 
Refuge  for  Women  at  Hudson,  now  the  New  York 
State  Training  School  for  Girls.  The  usefulness 
of  this  institution  was  soon  demonstrated,  and  later 
Mrs.  Lowell — although  not  then  a  member  of  the 
State  Board — was  active  in  the  support  of  measures 
and  legislation  which  afterwards  led  to  the  establish- 
ment by  the  state  of  the  Western  House  of  Refuge 
for  Women  at  Albion,  and  the  New  York  State  Re- 
formatory for  Women  at  Bedford.  Of  the  board  of 
managers  of  this  latter  institution,  Mrs.  Lowell  was 
for  several  years  an  active  member. 

We  have  thus  seen  that  to  Mrs.  Lowell,  more 
than  to  anyone  else,  is  due  the  establishment  of  the 
state  custodial  asylum  for  feeble-minded  women 
and  of  the  reformatories  for  women  in  this  state. 
These  are  her  enduring  monuments. 

In  1 88^  charges  were  made  to  the  state  board 
alleging  irregularities  and  mismanagement  of  the 
New  York  Infant  Asylum,  then,  as  now,  an  im- 
portant institution  for  the  care  of  children  in  this 
city,  receiving  large  sums  of  public  money.  The 

[  19] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

charges  were  brought  by  Theodore  Roosevelt,  now 
President  of  the  United  States,  and  Theodore  Kane 
Gibbs,  managers  of  the  institution,  after  unsuccessful 
attempts  on  their  part  to  bring  about  in  their  board 
the  reforms  they  thought  necessary. 

The  state  board  thereupon  appointed  a  special 
committee,  under  my  chairmanship,  of  which  Mrs. 
Lowell  and  General  John  J.  Milhau,  since  dead, 
were  the  other  members.  This  was  my  first  ser- 
vice on  an  important  special  committee  with  Mrs. 
Lowell.  The  committee  held  sixteen  sessions  and 
examined  many  witnesses,  among  them  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  who  earnestly  advocated  the  reforms  he 
had  urged  in  his  own  board. 

This  investigation,  in  view  of  the  importance 
of  the  institution  and  the  nature  of  the  controversy 
in  the  board,  which  comprised  many  prominent  cit- 
izens, excited  public  interest  and  was  the  subject 
of  much  newspaper  comment.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  a 
member  of  the  committee  and  was  helpful  in  fram- 
ing the  unanimous  report.  This  was  adopted  by 
the  board  and  later  led  to  all  the  reforms  sought. 
The  committee  found,  among  other  things,  that  the 
funds  of  the  institution  had  been  deposited  for 
many  years  with  a  dry-goods  firm  of  this  city,  of 
which  the  then  treasurer  of  the  institution  was  the 
leading  partner;  an  objectionable,  but  not  at  that 
time  an  illegal  practice.  Following  the  adoption  of 
the  report  by  the  board,  and  at  its  request,  a  bill 
was  introduced  in  the  legislature,  which  was  en- 
acted as  Chapter  415,  Laws  of  1884.  This  provided 
that  all  charitable  institutions  in  the  state,  supported 
in  whole  or  in  part  by  public  money,  shall  keep  all 
funds  paid  them  in  the  name  of  the  institution  on 
deposit  in  a  trust  company  or  national  or  state  bank, 

[20] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

and  that  the  managers  of  the  institutions  shall  des- 
ignate by  resolution  such  depository. 

It  is  exceedingly  interesting,  in  the  light  of  the 
history  of  this  country  for  the  last  twenty-two  years, 
to  read  the  concluding  paragraph  of  the  committee's 
report : 

"Your  committee  is  of  the  opinion  that  Messrs. 
Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Theodore  Kane  Gibbs, 
in  calling  the  attention  of  the  State  Board  of  Chari- 
ties to  the  mismanagement  of  the  New  York  Infant 
Asylum,  have  performed  a  public  duty." 

Among  the  many  encomiums  which  our  presi- 
dent has  received  since  he  began  his  public  career, 
not  the  least  is  the  approval  thus  given  by  Mrs. 
Lowell.  She  was  quick  to  appreciate  his  cour- 
ageous action  as  a  minority  manager  in  calling  the 
attention  of  the  state  board  to  acts  of  the  majority 
of  his  board,  after  he  had  made  unavailing  attempts 
to  secure  reforms  which  he  thought  the  welfare  of 
the  inmates  and  of  the  public  required. 

In  1886,  Mrs.  Lowell  presented  to  the  board  a 
very  useful  and  comprehensive  Report  on  the  Insti- 
tutions for  the  Care  of  Destitute  Children  of  the  City  of 
New  York.  The  report  opened  with  a  history  of 
the  legislation  afTecting  children,  included  care- 
fully prepared  statistical  tables  of  the  twenty-nine 
children's  institutions  then  carrying  on  their  work, 
and  gave  notes  of  her  inspections  of  each  of  these, 
of  seven  county  branches  and  of  two  other  insti- 
tutions not  tabulated,  in  all,  thirty-eight  insti- 
tutions. This  report,  which  contains  many  suggest- 
ions of  great  value,  is  an  example  of  Mrs.  Lowell's 
industry  and  the  thorough  manner  in  which  she  did 
all  her  work.  Her  most  important  recommendation 
was  for  the  creation  of  a  new  department  for  the 

[21  ] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

care  of  dependent  children  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
to  be  administered  by  the  commissioner  for  depend- 
ent children  of  the  city  of  New  York,  to  whom  all 
authority  concerning  the  care,  custody  and  dispo- 
sition of  the  dependent,  pauper  and  vagrant  child- 
ren of  the  city  of  New  York  was  to  be  given.  Mrs. 
Lowell  gave  strong  reasons  for  this  proposed  change 
in  the  law,  and  it  still  receives  the  serious  considera- 
tion of  those  interested  in  this  field  of  philanthropy. 

Reference  has  been  made  to  a  few  only  of  the 
many  special  services  of  Mrs.  Lowell  as  a  member 
of  the  state  board.  She  was  one  of  the  most  active, 
useful  and  influential  commissioners  we  have  had 
in  the  forty  years'  history  of  the  board,  and  she 
represented  the  women  of  the  state  at  its  council 
as  no  other  woman  could.  The  reports  of  the  board 
contain  many  valuable  papers  from  her  pen — if 
brought  together  they  would  make  a  large  volume. 
From  Brooklyn  to  Buffalo  she  was  known  and 
recognized  as  a  unique  and  invaluable  philanthro- 
pist. At  the  expiration  in  1889  of  her  term  of 
eight  years,  she  was  not  reappomted  by  the  then 
governor,  who  had  no  standard  by  which  to  measure 
the  value  of  such  public  services  as  hers.  Her  self- 
respect  would  not  allow  her  to  remain  a  member  of 
the  board  as  a  hold-over,  and  after  waiting  a  reason- 
able time  for  a  commission  to  continue  her  work — 
which  never  came — she  withdrew  finally  from  the 
board.  The  records  show  that  her  last  attendance 
at  a  meeting  was  December  12,  1889.  Her  services 
had  thus  covered  a  period  of  thirteen  and  a  half 
years. 

In  1892,  Governor  Flower  reappointed  Mrs. 
Lowell  to  the  state  board,  and  her  former  colleagues 
strongly  urged  her  to  resume  her  work  as  a  com- 

[22] 


IN  MEMORIAM:  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

missioner.  But,  in  the  interim  of  three  years,  she 
had  taken  up  and  become  deeply  interested  in 
work  for  social  betterment  in  this  city  and  could 
not  be  persuaded  to  lay  it  down.  Had  she  been 
reappointed  in  1889,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
Mrs.  Lowell  would  have  continued  a  member  of 
the  board  to  the  end. 

Such  is  the  brief  review  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  im- 
portant work  as  a  commissioner  of  the  State  Board 
of  Charities.  Time  will  not  permit  me  to  dwell,  as 
I  would  wish,  upon  her  personal  character  and  her 
methods  of  work. 

My  acquaintance  with  Mrs.  Lowell  was  begun  by 
the  receipt  of  this  letter  from  her,  written  on  the 
day  Governor  Cornell  commissioned  me  to  the 
state  board: 

STATE  OF  NEW  YORK. 

THE  STATE  BOARD  OF  CHARITIES. 

120  East  Thirtieth  Street,  May  31,  1882. 

DEAR  SIR  :  I  see  that  the  governor  has  nominated  you  as 
a  member  of  our  board,  and  I  hope  the  nomination  will  be  con- 
firmed. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  to  give  you  any  information  in  my 
power  in  regard  to  the  duties  of  the  office,  and  meanwhile  I 
enclose  the  constitution,  etc.,  of  the  Charity  Organization 
Society,  of  which  you  are  an  ex  officio  member,  and  in  which 
I  hope  you  may  take  an  interest. 
Truly  yours, 

JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL. 
(Mrs.  C.  R.  Lowell.) 

My  recollection  is  that  through  this  letter  was 
received  the  first  intimation  of  my  appointment. 
This  illustrates  her  alertness,  courtesy,  and  the 
attention  she  invariably  gave  to  her  public  duties. 

[23] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

^immediately  called  upon  Mrs.  Lowell,  and  thus 
began  an  acquaintance  which  ripened  into  a  friend- 
ship which  continued  without  interruption  until 
the  end  of  her  life.  In  looking  over  Mrs.  Lowell's 
letters  I  found  one,  written  in  1883,  which  is  so  in- 
dicative of  the  clear  and  logical  workings  of  her 
mind  that  I  desire  to  read  a  part  of  it  also: 

MY  DEAR  MR.  STEWART  :  Will  you  allow  me,  as  an  older 
member  of  the  board  than  yourself,  to  make  one  or  two  sug- 
gestions in  regard  to  the  investigation  you  are  about  to  under- 
take, or  rather  in  regard  to  the  general  question  of  investi- 
gations of  private  charities  ?  I  think  it  quite  important  that  we 
should  always  adopt,  and  keep  to,  the  position  that  no  society 
has  a  right  to  demand  an  investigation,  and  that  we  never 
undertake  one  for  the  purpose  of  clearing  a  society  that  has 
been  attacked.  That  is  their  own  office.  We  undertake 
investigations  when  we  consider  them  necessary  to  protect 
helpless  persons  from  injury  or  the  public  from  fraud.  This 
is  what  we  have  always  asserted,  and  we  even  went  so  far  as 
to  refuse  to  investigate  (except  in  a  very  superficial  manner) 
charges  made  against  so  important  an  institution  as  the 
Juvenile  Asylum,  on  the  ground  that  we  could  not  spend  the 
time  and  the  money  of  the  state  on  an  inquiry  which  was 
not  necessary  to  prevent  injury  to  the  inmates  or  the  public. 
Of  course,  the  trustees  were  indignant,  but  we  maintained 
our  position.  You  will  see  that  if  we  were  to  place  ourselves 
at  the  call  of  any  society  that  was  attacked,  we  might  spend 
all  our  time  in  defending  the  good  name  of  one  or  another. 

It  seems  to  me  very  desirable  to  explain  this  to  the  persons 
composing  the  Medical  Aid  Society,  showing  them  that  it  was 
because  the  charge  of  fraud  was  serious,  and  not  because  they 
demanded  it,  that  the  board  appointed  a  committee  to  make 
the  inquiry. 

In  my  opinion  few  practicing  lawyers  could  have 
written  so  wise,  clear  and  concise  a  letter. 
Among  Mrs.  Lowell's  characteristics  which  im- 

[24] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

pressed  me  most  strongly  were  her  promptness, 
constant  cheerfulness,  dauntless  courage,  and  tire- 
less industry  in  her  work.  She  was  always  sincere 
and  direct,  and  no  one  could  doubt  for  a  moment 
the  position  she  took  on  any  subject.  These  quali- 
ties and  her  total  absence  of  self-consciousness 
account  in  large  measure  for  the  wonderful  success 
of  her  work. 

The  world  will  miss  Mrs.  Lowell,  for  good  men 
and  good  women  are  needed  on  every  hand  to  carry 
on  its  work.  This  state  will  miss  her.  This  city 
will  miss  her;  but  we  who  knew  her  best  will  miss 
her  most  of  all. 


[25] 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE 


IF  you  should  ask  me  to  sum  up  in  one  word 
the    life    and    character    of    Mrs.    Lowell,   I 
should     call    it     "Consecration."      Other   wo- 
men   who     have     done    and    suffered    much 
less  than  she  did,  have  been  canonized;  but  she 
was  consecrated  to  a  glorious  and  tender  memory, 
consecrated  to  duty,  consecrated  to  charity  in  its 
largest  and  noblest  sense — the  effort  to  do  all  in  her 
power  for  the  relief  and  help  of  her  fellow  men  and 
women. 

I  fully  concur  in  every  word  of  praise  and  eulogy 
that  has  been  pronounced  upon  Mrs.  Lowell.  Her 
wonderful  traits,  her  force  of  character,  her  nobility 
and  courage  and  hope  and  love  of  justice,  have  been 
portrayed;  and  those  who  have  shared  in  her  labors 
have  told  you  by  what  noble  acts  she  illustrated 
these  great  virtues.  So  it  would  hardly  be  in  my 
power  to  add  anything  to  what  has  been  so  justly 
said  of  her.  And  yet  there  is  one  thought  that  has 
occurred  to  me,  and  that  is  that  for  a  full  apprecia- 
tion of  her  wonderful  character,  to  realize  how  deep- 
seated  her  patriotism  was,  how  ineradicable  her 
love  of  justice,  how  absolute  her  devotion  to  the 
interests  of  her  fellow  men  and  women,  it  is  worth 
while  to  trace  for  a  moment  the  growth  of  this 

[26] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

splendid  character,  and  the  influences  that  operated 
to  develop  her  whole-souled  and  generous  humanity. 

I  think  it  is  very  largely  to  her  father  and  her  hus- 
band that  we  should  look  for  a  certain  inspiration 
that  guided  her  subsequent  steps.  You  know  that 
very  often  our  own  dead  exercise  a  much  more 
potent  and  effective  influence  upon  our  lives  and 
conduct  than  any  living  associates.  Time  cannot 
loosen  their  hold  upon  our  hearts  and  minds.  In 
one  sense  they  never  have  come  back;  they  never  do 
come  back;  but  in  another,  and  a  very  actual  sense, 
they  are  always  coming  back  to  us;  especially  in 
hours  of  stress  and  peril  they  are  always  with  us,  and 
we  gain  more  support  from  them  sometimes  than 
from  any  living  companions.  We  often  hear  their 
voices  with  absolute  distinctness.  You  put  your 
ear  to  the  telephone  and  you  hear  the  voice  of  a 
loved  friend  in  Boston,  or  Chicago,  or  St.  Louis, 
with  perfect  distinctness — the  quality,  the  tone, 
and  the  expression.  You  can  tell  by  the  sound,  in 
addition  to  the  words  they  speak,  whether  they  are 
joyful  or  sorrowful,  whether  they  are  well  or  ill. 
And  so  through  the  long-distance  telephone  of  time 
we  hear  the  voices  of  our  departed  with  equal  dis- 
tinctness. They  startle  us  with  their  familiar 
reality. 

In  dreams,  if  they  are  dreams,  we  see  their  actual 
forms,  just  as  they  moved  before  us  in  life,  and  in 
moments  of  peril,  and  sorrow,  and  danger,  we  are 
conscious  sometimes  of  their  attendant  footsteps, 
and  really  feel  the  support  of  their  loving  arms. 

When  you  come  to  know  more  of  Mrs.  Lowell's 
early  days  you  learn  the  wonderful  advantages 
which  crowned  her  life,  and  how  trial  and  suffering 
made  her  what  she  was.  I  have  said  that  she 

[27] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

derived  much  from  her  noble  father.  He  was  a 
man  among  ten  thousand.  Born  to  wealth,  he 
treated  his  wealth  very  largely  as  a  trust  for  the 
use  and  benefit  of  suffering  mankind.  To  every 
good  cause  he  lent  his  sympathy,  his  advocacy  and 
his  material  support;  and  yet  he  always  exercised 
a  wise  and  sound  discretion.  He  was  always  de- 
termined to  inquire  for  himself,  and  to  act  upon 
the  result  of  his  own  judgment,  no  matter  what 
other  people  thought  or  public  opinion  declared. 
I  have  been  so  much  impressed  with  the  identity 
of  the  qualities  that  marked  his  life  with  those  which 
actuated  the  life  and  conduct  of  his  daughter  that 
I  should  like  to  read  to  you  one  or  two  sentences 
from  what  was  said  of  him  more  than  twenty-three 
years  ago,  when  he  was  laid  to  rest;  and  I  leave  you 
to  judge  whether  this  is  a  case  of  the  transmission 
of  personal  qualities  or — for  it  is  sometimes  denied 
that  they  can  be  transmitted — whether  she  derived 
by  family  discipline,  and  example,  and  constant 
contact  in  childhood,  youth  and  womanhood,  the 
qualities  which  he  himself  exhibited.  Now,  this 
was  said  of  him: 

His  was  not  merely  the  courage  of  his  convictions,  which 
is  common  enough,  but  the  courage  of  coming  to  conclu- 
sions of  his  own  without  regard  to  either  private  or  public 
opinion.  One  might  sometimes  be  almost  impatient  with 
him,  as  he  did  not  seem  to  be  open  to  conviction.  In  one 
sense  he  was  not ;  but  it  was  because  he  was  so  singularly 
faithful  to  the  obligation  of  coming  to  a  judgment  of  his  own, 
and  then  adhering  to  it. 

Again: 

All  good  causes,  the  help  of  the  poor  and  criminal  and  the 
enslaved  had  always  his  sympathy  and  support ;  but  under- 
neath them  all  he  was  seeking  for  the  great  remedy  which 

[28] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

would  strike  at  the  root  of  all  the  evils  and  suffering  which 
the  world  inherits  from  generation  to  generation.  The 
lesson  of  his  life  was  a  profound  reverence  for  human  nature ; 
a  profound  belief  in  man's  high  destiny ;  and  a  profound  de- 
votion to  what  he  accepted  as  his  duty. 

And  Mr.  Curtis,  who  knew  him  almost  better 
than  any  other  man,  himself  an  apostle  of  light 
and  humanity,  said  this  of  him — and  you  will  see 
the  same  striking  characteristics  in  his  daughter: 

The  strength  and  simplicity  and  sweetness  of  his  nature, 
the  lofty  sense  of  justice,  the  tranquil  and  complete  devo- 
tion to  duty,  the  large  and  human  sympathy  which  was  not 
lost  in  vague  philanthropic  feeling,  but  was  mindful  of  every 
detail  of  relief ;  the  sound  and  steady  judgment,  the  noble 
independence  of  thought  and  perfect  courage  of  conviction, 
the  perfect  union  of  sympathy  and  understanding,  and  a 
character  which  seemed  to  be  without  a  flaw  and  to  belong  to 
what  we  call  the  ideal  man. 

It  is  true  that  every  word  of  that  can  be  said 
with  equal  truth  and  force  of  Mrs.  Lowell;  and  it 
does  give  a  just  and  adequate  and  perfect  state- 
ment of  her  character  as  well  as  of  her  father's. 

So  much  for  the  influence  which  the  father  must 
have  exercised  to  the  latest  day  of  her  life.  Do 
you  not  suppose,  that  though  dead  he  yet  spoke  to 
her? 

And  then  of  her  equally  noble  husband,  who 
added — if  anything  could  be  added  to  that  paternal 
record — a  fiery  and  undying  patriotism  which  he 
perhaps  communicated  to  her.  I  knew  him  long 
before  his  marriage. 

I  doubt  if  there  is  another  man  in  this  meeting 
who  knew  him  so  early  and  so  well.  He  came  to 
Harvard  College  when  I  was  a  student  there,  and 

[29] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

we  remained  there  together  for  four  years.  He  was 
not  only  one  of  the  noblest-hearted,  but  one  of  the 
most  brilliant-minded  young  men  whom  it  was 
ever  my  pleasure  or  the  pleasure  of  anybody  else 
to  meet.  He  was  a  natural  leader  of  men.  His 
intellect  was  of  remarkable  quickness  and  power. 
He  seemed  to  acquire  by  a  mere  glance  at  a  page  the 
whole  contents  of  it;  and  what  appeared  to  require 
hours  of  the  average  boy  to  master,  he  could  easily 
make  his  own.  As  I  said,  he  was  a  natural  leader 
of  men.  He  was  first  among  all  his  fellows,  first 
in  scholarship,  first  in  character,  and  first  in  their 
activities, mental  and  physical;  and  when  graduated 
from  the  university  no  young  man  went  forth  with 
greater  promise.  It  was  some  years  before  he  met 
Mrs.  Lowell.  He  gave  himself  up  to  actual  business 
and  work.  He,  too,  had  a  wonderful  sympathy  with 
working  people  and  labored  steadily  for  their  benefit, 
and  wished  to  enter  upon  a  life  where  he  could  be  at 
one  with  them.  Then  came  a  sad  failure  of  health, 
when  for  two  or  three  years  he  was  practically 
disabled;  but  fortunately  for  himself,  for  his  country, 
and  for  us,  when  the  great  war  broke  out  it  found 
him  well  again  and  ready;  and  he  gave  himself 
to  the  service  of  his  country.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  trusted  lieutenants  of  our  great  General  Sheri- 
dan; he  lost  his  life  in  serving  under  him.  His 
gallant  exploits,  his  rapid  development  of  military 
knowledge  and  skill  and  zeal  amazed  everybody. 

It  was  amidst  the  flames  of  war  that  they  made 
each  other's  acquaintance  and  married,  and  after 
a  few  short  months  he  gave,  as  he  had  expected 
that  he  might  at  any  moment  be  called  upon  to 
give,  his  life  for  his  country. 

With  such  an  inheritance  from  the  father,  and  an 

[30] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

alliance  with  such  a  man,  can  anybody  doubt  that 
the  inspiration  she  so  derived  from  them  set  her  in 
motion  at  least  on  the  great  and  splendid  career  of 
which  you  have  all  heard  so  much  to-night,  and 
that  it  sustained  her  heart  and  courage  through 
it  all? 

My  personal  knowledge  and  association  with 
Mrs.  Lowell  was  in  connection  with  the  State  Chari- 
ties Aid  Association,  where,  until  she  became  a  member 
of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  she  did  constant 
work.  I  remember  one  instance  where  her  work 
made  a  great  advance  in  public  recognition.  I  was 
asking  Mr.  de  Forest  last  week  to  send  me  material 
to  refresh  my  recollection  of  events  connected  with 
Mrs.  Lowell,  and  he  said:  "Why  you  made  a  speech 
about  her  yourself  thirty  years  ago,  at  the  meeting 
at  the  Masonic  Temple."  At  that  meeting  the 
venerable  Charles  O'Conor,  leader  of  the  American 
Bar,  who  had  just  recovered  from  what  was  for 
many  weeks  regarded  as  a  fatal  illness,  presided. 
Governor  Tilden  was  there,  and  another  whose 
name  has  been  mentioned  here  to-night.  There 
were  many  brave  workers  for  charity  in  those  days, 
as  there  have  been  since;  but  as  many  of  them  are 
here  to-night,  you  will  not  expect  me  to  mention 
them.  But  there  was  one  present  at  that  meeting 
with  whom  it  was  pleasant  to  associate — brave, 
persistent,  charitable,  a  lover  of  his  kind — I  mean 
Theodore  Roosevelt.  Not  the  man  whom  we  delight 
to  honor,  and  many  of  us  adore,  to-day,  but  his 
noble  father;  and  it  is  pleasant  to  think  of  him 
and  to  recall  his  spotless  life,  his  wonderful  virtues, 
and  to  remember  that  he  was  worthy  to  be  the 
father  of  such  a  son.  He  was  at  that  meeting;  he 
was  a  member  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  and 

[31  1 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Mrs.  Lowell  had  just  made  an  exhaustive  report, 
which  was  presented  to  the  meeting,  on  a  subject 
which  at  that  time  was  very  important,  namely, 
"the  sturdy  beggar;"  the  tramp,  a  subject  which 
has  vexed  charitable  souls  from  the  days  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  to  now.  She  had,  with  the  thoroughness 
characteristic  of  her,  gone  into  the  subject  and  dis- 
played the  entire  natural  history  of  tramps.  She 
found  that  many  districts  in  the  state  of  New  York, 
in  the  name  of  the  overseers  of  the  poor,  were  practi- 
cally keeping  hotels  for  the  entertainment  of  tramps, 
all  the  way  from  New  York  to  Buffalo.  She  entered 
with  minuteness  of  detail  and  proof  into  the  facts 
of  that  gross  and  crying  evil,  and  showed  how  it 
might  be  eradicated;  Governor  Tilden  and  Mr. 
Roosevelt  drove  home  together  from  that  meeting. 
As  I  have  understood,  the  Governor  had  been  so 
much  impressed  with  her  report  that  he  said  to  Mr. 
Roosevelt  that  he  thought  a  woman  should  be 
appointed  on  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  and  the 
result  was  that  Mrs.  Lowell,  almost  the  first  woman 
in  the  state  or  country  to  be  placed  on  such  a  board, 
was  appointed  a  member  straightway. 

Mr.  Stewart  has  told  you  what  wonderful  work 
she  did.  While  there  she  organized  the  Charity 
Organization  Society.  If  she  had  done  nothing 
else  in  the  course  of  her  remarkable  career,  that 
alone  would  entitle  her  to  a  monument  to  be  erected 
at  the  hands  of  the  people  of  the  state  of  New  York. 

I  hope  this  memorial  meeting,  expressive  of  our 
admiration  of  this  most  valuable  woman,  will  not 
end  in  empty  breath.  It  seems  to  me,  as  Professor 
Adler  has  intimated,  that  there  should  be  some  per- 
manent memorial  of  this  woman  who  has  done  so 
much  for  us. 

[32] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

What  form  it  should  take  I  do  not  say.  I  do  not 
think  it  should  be  the  work  of  the  Charity  Organi- 
zation Society  alone,  as  that  is  only  a  small  part 
of  the  work,  only  a  small  part  of  the  great  good 
which  has  been  justly  attributed  to  her.  I  think  it 
should  be  something  which  would  reflect  the  ad- 
miration of  the  people  of  New  York;  or  at  least  of 
those  who  are  interested  in  charities;  and  when  you 
have  gathered  them  in,  the  rest  may  go.  Whether 
there  shall  be  a  tablet  at  the  entrance  to  this 
building,  which  she  sanctified  by  her  work,  which 
shall  record  her  achievements,  or  whether  it  shall 
take  some  other  and  larger  form,  it  seems  to  me 
that  it  should  be  taken  into  very  serious  consider- 
ation by  your  body. 


[33  1 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


JACOB  A.  RI  IS 


PERHAPS  one  excellent  way  of  making  future 
generations  remember  Mrs.  Lowell  would  be 
to  call  one  of  the  small  parks  now  coming 
into  existence  all  over  the  city  after  her. 
There  is  a  distinct  need  of  attaching  the  influence 
of  such  a  name  to  one  of  the  parks  on  the  East  Side. 

I  have  been  trying  to  think  back  to  the  time  when 
I  first  knew  Mrs.  Lowell,  but  I  cannot  remember. 
I  came  in  course  of  time  to  pay  almost  daily  visits 
to  her  house.  In  those  days  she  lived  in  East 
Thirtieth  Street,  quite  near  to  the  ferry  which 
brought  me  over  to  New  York  when  I  came  in  from 
Long  Island,  and  I  fell  into  the  habit,  especially 
when  anything  troubled  me,  of  ringing  her  doorbell 
when  I  passed  the  house.  She  was  never  "out," 
always  ready  to  sit  down  and  listen  to  and  give 
advice  and  opinion.  It  was  then  I  learned  what 
a  patient,  sweet,  wise  and  lovable  woman  she  was. 

Mr.  Stewart  spoke  of  her  courage.  Yes,  she  was 
courageous.  I  think  the  only  thing  in  the  world 
she  was  afraid  of— we  were  not — was  of  not  following 
her  own  conviction  and  conscience  to  the  end. 

You  have  spoken  about  her  cheerfulness.  She 
was  cheerful  and  hopeful  because  she  believed  in 
God,  and  could  wait.  That  was  often  the  friendly 
contention  between  us.  She  could  wait.  I  was 

[34] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

young  then,  and  impetuous,  impatient.  She  be- 
lieved in  her  fellow  man  and  could  wait,  because 
she  saw  the  image  of  God  in  him,  and  was  sure  that, 
given  the  chance,  it  would  work  out.  She  was 
patient  because  life  and  her  faith  had  taught  her 
wisdom;  and  she  had  that  God-given  sense  of  humor 
that  gets  us  over  so  many  rough  spots.  I  recall  an 
occasion  when  we  had  gone  to  Mayor  Grant  to  see 
him  about  the  police  station-houses.  We  had 
nagged  and  nagged  the  mayor  until  he  was  tired  of  it, 
and  when  we  told  him  for  the  fiftieth  time,  I  suppose, 
that  in  Boston  they  had  municipal  lodging-houses, 
he  cried  out  in  impatience:  "Boston,  Boston!  I  am 
sick  of  the  name  of  Boston." 

I  suppose  he  did  not  know  what  "Boston"  meant 
to  her;  I  turned  to  her  in  some  apprehension  to  see 
how  she  took  it,  but  she  was  leaning  back  in  her 
chair  and  laughing  heartily. 

Speaking  of  her  patience,  I  remember  another 
occasion  when  we  had  gone  to  Albany  to  argue  for 
something  that  we  had  up  before  an  assembly  com- 
mittee. I  was  speaking.  I  was  filled  up  with 
arguments  which  she  had  given  me  on  the  way  up, 
and  not  those  which  I  had  thought  out  for  myself, 
and  was  trying  to  keep  my  mind  on  them,  when  one 
of  the  assemblymen  interrupted  me:  "Professor," 
he  said,  "You  people  come  here  year  after  year 
arguing  for  these  things;  let  me  ask  you,  what  do  you 
get  for  it  ?"  For  the  moment  I  was  nonplussed. 
"What  do  you  mean?"  I  asked. 

"I  mean,"  he  said,  "this,"  holding  out  one  hand, 
"What  do  you  get,  do  you  understand  ?"  I  could 
have  throttled  the  man.  He  was  the  only  one  I  ever 
knew  to  distrust  or  question  Mrs.  Lowell's  motives. 
But  when  I  glanced  at  her,  I  saw  her  sitting  with 

[35] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

that  patient,  far-away  look  in  her  face.  Those 
things  meant  nothing  to  her.  She  was  there  in  a 
cause.  It  was  God's  cause  and  it  was  bound  to 
prevail.  The  rest  didn't  matter. 

We  did  not  always  agree.  I  was  glad  to  hear  Mr. 
Stewart  refer  to  her  early  work  with  Mr.  Roose- 
velt. Later  on  they  differed  sometimes.  It  was 
impossible  that  two  such  wholesouled,  emphatic 
characters,  when  thrown  much  together,  should 
always  agree.  They  disagreed;  and  then  we  dis- 
agreed. I  remember  her  exclaiming  once  at  the 
end  of  one  of  those  discussions:  "You  won't  have 
that  young  man  touched  on  any  account."  And  I : 
"No;  certainly  not  by  you;  you  are  much  too  good; 
you  are  too  like  one  another." 

But  those  things  passed  away.  Long  before  she 
died  she  knew  what  Theodore  Roosevelt  stood  for 
in  the  nation's  life.  I  think  I  was  the  last  of  you  all 
to  see  her.  She  sent  for  me  to  come  out  to  Green- 
wich, where  she  was,  a  very  few  weeks  before  she 
died  and  I  came  quickly.  I  found  her  greatly 
aged  and  worn,  and  so  tired.  She  sat  by  me  and 
held  my  hand,  and  I  think  she  knew  eternity  was 
just  beyond.  She  spoke  of  Roosevelt;  and  she 
sent  her  last  message  to  him.  It  was  a  message  of 
love  and  cheer.  When  I  gave  it  to  him  he  said: 
"She  had  a  sweet,  unworldly  character;  and  never 
man  or  woman  ever  strove  for  loftier  ideals."  Un- 
worldly, yes,  in  a  sense,  and  yet  of  how  direct  and 
great  a  meaning  to  the  world  she  helped  to  make 
sweeter  and  better.  It  was  the  last,  except  a  word 
to  myself,  which  I  cannot  help  giving  you  here. 
I  think  it  belongs.  Perhaps  it  has  a  message  for 
each  of  you.  As  we  sat  by  the  fire,  she  spoke  of 
my  wife  and  kept  my  hand  in  hers,  and  smoothed 

[36] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

it  again  and  again,  and  she  nodded  with  the  gentle 
smile  that  hovered  on  her  lips  all  that  evening,  and 
repeated,  "Yes,  yes;  I  know.  But  think  of  my 
waiting  for  my  husband  forty-one  long  years,  forty- 
one  years."  And  it  seemed  to  me  as  if  she  looked 
clear  over  in  the  beyond  where  he  was  waiting, 
so  soon  to  receive  her.  Friends,  however,  much 
we  want  her  back,  I  think  there  is  not  one  here 
who  would  not  rather  let  him  keep  her. 


[371 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


SETH  LOW 


1  REMEMBER  to  have  heard  Colonel  Higginson, 
of  Boston,  speak  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  husband  as  one 
of  a  group  of  young  men  whom  he  had  known 
at  Harvard,  "who  threw  away  their  lives  like 
a  flower"  for  our  country.     I  have  seldom  heard  a 
phrase  that  moved  me  more.     It  seems  to  present 
the  picture  of  a  group  of  gallant  young  men,  full  of 
the  hope  and  the  enthusiasm  and  the  fancy  of  youth, 
each  asking  no  greater  privilege  than  to  lay  them 
all  at  the  feet  of  his  country,  as  a  lover  gives  a  bud 
to  the  lady  of  his  love. 

It  was  not  given  to  Mrs.  Lowell  to  throw  away 
her  life  like  a  flower;  but  for  forty-one  long  years,  to 
use  her  own  words,  her  character  grew  in  this  com- 
munity; she  had  always  an  inspiring  and  unlifting 
influence  and  shed  abroad  a  delightful  fragrance  as 
she  moved  along  our  streets.  The  last  letters  I  ex- 
changed with  her  related  to  a  visit  which  I  made 
last  spring  in  Charleston,  to  the  Robert  Gould  Shaw 
Memorial  School  of  that  city.  Colonel  Shaw,  as  you 
know,  was  Mrs.  Lowell's  brother,  and  he  fell  at  the 
head  of  a  negro  regiment  in  the  attack  on  Battery 
Wagner,  one  of  the  defenses  of  the  city. 

See  what  a  memorial  the  city  of  Charleston  has 
erected  for  Mrs.  Lowell's  brother.  The  Robert 

[38] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Gould  Shaw  Memorial  School  for  negro  children  is 
a  part  of  the  public  school  system  of  Charleston, 
S.  C.  Over  the  desk  of  the  principal  is  the  picture 
.of  Colonel  Shaw,  draped  with  the  American  flag. 
At  the  further  end  of  the  room  is  a  photograph  of 
the  Shaw  memorial  monument  erected  on  Boston 
Common.  The  little  negroes  stood  up  in  their 
places,  as  the  children  stand  every  morning  in  our 
schools  here,  and  saluted  the  flag,  and  swore  fealty 
to  it,  to  the  country  it  represents,  and  to  all  that  it 
stands  for  to  humanity. 

I  like  to  tell  that  story  about  our  fellow  citizens 
of  Charleston,  as  it  seems  to  me  an  evidence  of  mag- 
nanimity on  their  part  as  great  as  any  that  history 
records.  It  shows  how  much  they  wished  to  do 
honor  to  the  inherent  manhood  in  the  man  who  died 
attacking  their  defenses.  Shall  we,  for  whom  Mrs. 
Lowell  lived  her  whole  life,  be  less  appreciative 
than  pur  fellow  citizens  of  Charleston  ? 

I  like  Mr.  Choate's  suggestion  for  a  permanent 
memorial  to  her;  and  I  hope  that  this  meeting  will 
ask  that  a  committee  be  appointed  by  the  chairman 
to  arrange  for  a  suitable  memorial  to  Mrs.  Lowell  at 
the  hands  of  the  people  of  this  great  city. 

I  suppose  that  Mrs.  Lowell  may  have  felt  that  her 
name  stood  for  something  among  the  poor  people  of 
this  city.  I  do  not  know  whether  she  could  realize 
how  much  it  meant,  not  to  them  only,  but  to  all  of 
her  fellow  citizens.  Professor  Adler  spoke  of  her 
as  the  Lady  of  the  Lamp.  She  was,  indeed,  the  Lady 
of  the  Lamp;  and  she  went  before  us  always  carrying 
that  shining  light.  She  does  not  need  any  memorial 
at  our  hands;  but  for  our  own  sakes  we  want  to 
prove  and  establish  before  the  world  that  we  not 
only  saw  in  her  the  light  of  her  character,  but  that 

[39] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

from  the  flame  of  her  spirit  we  also  have  lit  a  light 
in  our  own  breasts. 

* 

Mr.  Low's  motion  that  a  committee  be  appointed 
to  "carry  into  effect  some  memorial  of  Mrs.  Lowell — 
not  merely  in  memory  of  her  but  to  carry  on  her 
example  into  the  future,"  was  seconded  by  Richard 
Watson  Gilder,  and  thereupon  carried.  In  closing 
the  meeting,  Mr.  de  Forest  said: 

"And  now  this  meeting  comes  to  a  close,  with  one 
word :  We,  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society,  on 
whose  initiative  this  meeting  was  held,  have  perhaps 
seemed  to  hold  ourselves  unduly  in  the  background. 
We  feel  that  Mrs.  Lowell,  in  a  peculiar  sense,  be- 
longed to  us;  or  perhaps  I  should  say  that  we  be- 
longed to  her.  She  was,  as  Mr.  Choate  said,  the 
founder  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society.  She 
was  much  more  than  that.  She  was  its  guiding 
spirit.  Since  the  first  day  of  its  existence  she  has 
watched  over  it.  There  was  hardly  a  meeting  she 
did  not  attend.  There  is  hardly  a  committee  on 
which  she  has  not  served.  There  is  no  office  in  the 
society  that  she  could  not  have  had  if  she  had  been 
willing  to  take  it.  While  her  services  in  this  build- 
ing, in  its  executive  councils,  and  on  the  executive 
committee,  of  which  she  was  a  member,  almost  from 
the  start,  were  of  the  highest  value  and  of  the 
greatest  importance,  she  never  gave  more  time 
or  thought  to  service  of  seemingly  larger  scope  than 
she  did  to  the  more  humble  district  committee 
work  on  the  East  Side,  where  she  daily  came  face  to 
face  and  heart  to  heart  with  every  poor  person  who 
sought  her  counsel." 


[40] 


OTHER  CONTRIBUTIONS 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


MRS.  LOWELL'S  SERVICES  TO  THE  STATE 

EDWARD  T.  DEVINE 


A  FULL  account  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  public  jService 
would  begin  with  the  story  of  her  labors  on 
behalf  of  the  soldiers  at  the  front,  and  would 
follow  through  forty  full  years  of  uninter- 
rupted labor  in  charity,  in  politics,  in  reform,  and 
in  public  education.     All  these  years  were  crowded 
with  varied  and  successful  achievements  and  with 
labors  on  behalf  of  other  movements  which,  because 
times  were  not  ripe  for  them,  were  not  crowned 
with  success.     Here  it  is  possible  to  detach  only 
certain  threads  of  the  history  relating  especially  to 
her  service  to  the  state  and  its  charitable  institutions. 
The  Richmond  county  committee  of  the  State 
Charities  Aid  Association  was  organized  on  Staten 
Island  on  January  27,  1873.     Mrs.  Lowell  was  one 
of  its  thirty  members,  and  took  an  active  part  in  its 
work. 

From  1875  to  1877  she  was  successively  a  member, 
secretary,  and  chairman  of  the  standing  committee 
on  adult  able-bodied  paupers,  which  was  one  of  the 
four  standing  committees  of  the  State  Charities 
Aid  Association  at  its  headquarters  in  New  York 
city.  While  chairman  of  this  committee,  Mrs. 
Lowell  prepared,  in  February,  1876,  an  exceedingly 

[431 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

able  special  report  on  "methods,  expenses,  extent,  and 
results  of  poor  law  administration  and  relief  in  the 
several  towns  in  the  county  of  Westchester,  during 
the  ten  years  1864  to  1873,  inclusive."  This  report 
was  presented  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  State 
Charities  Aid  Association,  held  in  Masonic  Temple, 
February  24,  1876,  at  which  meeting  Samuel  J. 
Tilden,  then  governor,  was  present.  The  other 
speakers  were  Charles  O'Conor  and  Joseph  H. 
Choate.  Mrs.  Lowell's  report  made  such  an  im- 
pression upon  Governor  Tilden  that  when,  within  a 
few  months,  the  opportunity  was  presented,  he 
appointed  her  a  member  of  the  State  Board  of 
Charities.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  the  first  woman  to  be- 
come a  member  of  the  state  board.  At  that  time 
women  were  very  rarely  appointed  on  state  boards 
of  any  kind,  and  in  the  year  of  her  appointment 
there  appears  to  have  been  no  woman  in  the  board 
of  managers  of  any  New  York  state  charitable 
institution  or  hospital  for  the  insane.  It  has  since 
become  an  almost  universal  custom  to  appoint  one 
or  more  women  as  members  of  such  boards  and  to 
this  very  desirable  change  her  own  efficient  service 
very  largely  contributed.  After  her  appointment 
as  a  member  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  Mrs. 
Lowell  ceased  to  be  an  active  worker  in  the  State 
Charities  Aid  Association,  devoting  her  energies 
instead  to  her  official  work  for  the  state. 

Mrs.  Lowell's  first  recorded  action  as  a  member 
of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  was  the  introduction 
of  a  resolution,  doubtless  of  a  routine  character, 
designating  certain  persons  to  act  as  visitors  to 
poorhouses  and  other  institutions  in  the  county  of 
Queens.  Thirteen  years  later,  on  her  last  appear- 
ance as  a  member  of  the  board,  she  presented 

[44] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

notes  of  her  visits  to  certain  orphan  asylums  in 
the  city  of  New  York,  and  requested  that  these  be 
appended  to  her  report  previously  submitted.  The 
board  then  accepted  Mrs.  Lowell's  full  report  on 
this  subject  and  ordered  it  to  be  transmitted  to 
the  legislature  with  the  annual  report  of  the  board. 
The  two  subjects  which  thus  marked  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  her  services  in  that  body,  volun- 
teer personal  service  and  the  better  care  of  depend- 
ent children,  were  the  two  deepest  and  most  abiding 
interests  of  her  public  life. 

On  December  5,  1876,  she  presented  the  draft  of  a 
proposed  bill  to  provide  for  the  custody  and  reform- 
atory treatment  of  vagrants  and  disorderly  persons, 
and  on  the  following  day  she  secured  the  appoint- 
ment of  visitors  to  the  poorhouses  and  other  insti- 
tutions of  New  York  county. 

The  proposal  for  more  effective  treatment  of  va- 
grancy is  indicative  of  a  determination  which  had 
already  expressed  itself  at  the  meeting  of  the  State 
Charities  Aid  Association,  which  found  repeated 
expression  in  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  in  the 
Charity  Organization  Society,  in  the  conference  of 
charities,  and  in  all  her  writings  on  the  subject  of 
poor  relief. 

Even  more  indicative  of  her  personal  quality  and 
originality  is  a  resolution  adopted  by  the  board 
upon  her  motion  of  June  14,  1877,  requesting  each 
member  of  the  board  to  make  an  annual  report  at 
the  December  meeting  on  such  subjects  as  he  may 
consider  of  interest  to  the  board. 

In  the  following  September  she  presented  a  report 
from  a  committee  appointed  to  consider  and  propose 
an  amendment  to  an  assembly  bill  for  the  custody 
and  reformatory  treatment  of  vagrants. 

[45) 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

On  December  4,  1877,  Mrs.  Lowell  submitted  a 
report  on  correspondence  with  local  visiting  com- 
mittees of  the  several  counties,  and  suggested  that 
the  State  Charities  Aid  Association  should  hereafter 
have  the  appointment  of  these  committees,  subject 
to  the  approval  of  the  commissioner  of  the  district. 

At  the  same  meeting  she  called  attention  to  the 
desirability  of  requiring  counties  exempt  from  the 
operations  of  the  Willard  Asylum  act  to  live  up  to 
the  rules  and  regulations  which  won  the  condition 
of  their  exemption,  failing  which  the  exemption 
should  be  revoked. 

On  January  3,  1878,  Mrs.  Lowell  presented  a 
paper  in  which  she  had  collected  from  the  report 
of  the  secretary  of  the  board  referred  to  in  a  later 
paragraph  as  printed  in  the  board's  tenth  annual 
report,  facts  in  regard  to  the  vagrant,  feeble-mind- 
ed and  idiotic  inmates  of  the  almshouses  of  the 
state. 

On  March  14,  1878,  Mrs.  Lowell  reported  in  regard 
to  the  establishment  of  a  custodial  asylum  for 
idiots.  At  the  same  meeting  she  presented  a  report 
from  the  committee  on  vagrancy,  embodying  a 
recommendation  to  the  legislature  that  workhouses 
should  be  established  for  the  detention  and  employ- 
ment of  vagrant,  disorderly,  and  idle  persons,  and 
for  able-bodied  vagrants,  except  non-residents  (who 
are  to  be  provided  for  by  an  amendment  to  the 
State  Pauper  law),  and  that  the  commitment  of  able- 
bodied  persons  of  these  several  classes  to  poorhouses, 
jails,  or  other  places  of  idle  detention  should  be 
prohibited. 

On  April  3,  1878,  she  offered  a  resolution  request- 
ing the  president  to  present  at  a  later  meeting  a 
statement  of  facts  and  a  plan  for  meeting  the  diffi- 

[46] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

culties  in  the  disposition  and  care  of  dependent 
children. 

On  June  13,  1878,  Mrs.  Lowell  reported  that  the 
recommendation  to  the  legislature  for  an  appropri- 
ation for  a  custodial  asylum  for  adult  idiots,  based 
upon  her  own  previous  reports  already  cited,  had 
been  successful,  and  that  an  appropriation  of  $18,000 
had  been  made  for  this  purpose.  This  appropria- 
tion was  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  board  of  mana- 
gers of  the  institution  then  known  as  the  State  Idiot 
Asylum  at  Syracuse,  and  a  special  asylum  was 
opened  by  them  for  feeble-minded  women  at  Newark 
in  Wayne  county.  This  asylum  seven  years  later 
was  incorporated  as  a  separate  state  institution  for 
the  custodial  care  of  feeble-minded  women. 

On  March  10,  1880,  Mrs.  Lowell  introduced  a  reso- 
lution recommending  "the  establishment  of  a  re- 
formatory for  women  where  they  can  be  employed 
at  remunerative  work  and  be  under  the  direction 
and  care  of  their  own  sex."  An  amendment  was 
offered  at  a  later  meeting  by  another  member  pro- 
viding that  "  the  establishment  of  the  same  be 
guarded  with  such  provisions  as  shall  protect  the 
state  from  abuse  in  the  expenditure  of  the  public 
funds/'  Whereupon  Mrs.  Lowell  withdrew  her  prev- 
ious resolution,  which  she  had  in  the  meantime 
amended  by  substituting  "houses  of  correction"  for 
"reformatory,"  and  inserting  "so  far  as  practicable," 
before  "at  remunerative  work;"  but  on  March  9, 
1 88 1,  Mrs.  Lowell  returned  to  the  subject  by  offering 
the  following  resolutions  which  were  adopted: 

WHEREAS,  In  the  inquiry  made  by  the  State  Board  of 
Charities  into  the  cause  of  the  increase  of  pauperism,  it  was 
conclusively  proved  that  vice,  pauperism,  idiocy  and  insanity 
are  to  a  great  degree  hereditary  ;  and 

[47] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

WHEREAS,  The  present  organization  of  the  poorhouses  of 
the  state  renders  it  impossible  that  vicious  and  pauper  women, 
who  become  the  mothers  of  vicious  and  pauper  children,  should 
be  trained  and  disciplined  in  those  institutions  ;  and 

WHEREAS,  Under  a  systematic  course  of  instruction,  a 
certain  number  of  such  women  might  be  reclaimed  and  the 
state  saved  from  great  future  expense;  therefore 

Resolved,  That  the  State  Board  of  Charities  recommend 
that  the  legislature  establish  an  institution  for  the  custody 
and  discipline  of  vagrant  and  disorderly  women,  under  the 
charge  of  officers  of  their  own  sex. 

In  accordance  with  this  recommendation  the 
House  of  Refuge  for  Women  at  Hudson  was  estab- 
lished in  the  same  year.  This  institution  has  since 
been  transformed  into  the  New  York  Training  School 
for  Girls;  but  in  line  with  the  original  purpose  of  the 
reformatory  at  Hudson  and  largely  through  Mrs. 
Lowell's  personal  efforts,  although  not  as  a  member 
of  the  state  board,  there  have  since  been  created  two 
similar  institutions,  the  Western  House  of  Refuge 
for  Women  at  Albion,  and  the  New  York  State 
Reformatory  for  Women  at  Bedford.  Mrs.  Lowell 
was  an  active  member  of  the  board  of  managers  of 
the  Bedford  reformatory  in  its  initial  stages. 

On  October  n,  1881,  Mrs.  Lowell  presented  a 
report  on  outdoor  relief  societies  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  of  which  she  was  requested  to  furnish  a  copy 
for  the  annual  report  of  the  board,  and  on  the  motion 
of  another  member  the  following  preamble  and  reso- 
lution proposed  by  Mrs.  Lowell  in  her  report  were 
adopted  by  the  board: 

WHEREAS,  There  are  in  the  city  of  New  York  a  large  num- 
ber of  independent  societies  engaged  in  teaching  and  relieving 
the  poor  of  the  city  in  their  own  homes;  and 

WHEREAS,  There  is  at  present  no  system  of  co-operation 

[48] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

by  which  these  societies  can  receive  definite  mutual  inform- 
ation in  regard  to  the  work  of  each  other;  and 

WHEREAS,  Without  some  such  system,  it  is  impossible  that 
much  of  their  efforts  should  not  be  wasted,  and  even  do  harm 
by  encouraging  pauperism  and  imposture;  therefore 

Resolved,  That  the  commissioners  of  New  York  city  are 
appointed  a  committee  to  take  such  steps  as  they  deem  wise, 
to  inaugurate  a  system  of  mutual  help  and  co-operation 
between  such  societies. 

Mrs.  Lowell  was  designated  by  the  board  to  act  as 
chairman  of  this  committee,  and  the  Charity  Organ- 
ization was  the  result.  In  1883  Mrs.  Lowell  made  an 
official  report  to  the  state  board  on  the  work  of  the 
society. 

On  March  16,  1882,  Mrs.  Lowell  and  Dr.  Stephen 
Smith  presented  a  report  on  the  condition  of 
the  asylums  for  the  insane  in  New  York  county, 
embodying  three  alternative  plans  for  improving 
the  asylums.  The  third,  which  was  recommended 
by  the  committee,  was  that  the  state  board  should 
prepare  a  bill  providing  that  New  York  county,  to- 
gether with  the  three  other  counties  which  still  re- 
tained their  acute  insane,  should  be  required  as  were 
the  other  counties  of  the  state,  to  place  their  acute  in- 
sane in  state  hospitals. 

On  February  13,  1884,  Mrs.  Lowell  was  requested, 
after  presenting  a  report  on  further  state  custodial 
accommodation  for  adult  idiots,  to  prepare  a  me- 
morial to  the  legislature  on  behalf  of  the  board  on  the 
necessity  for  further  provision  for  the  custodial  care 
and  sequestration  of  idiotic  and  feeble-minded  girls 
and  women;  for  their  protection  and  the  protection 
of  the  state  from  hereditary  increase  of  that  class  of 
dependents  on  public  charity. 

In    connection    with    this    subject,  Mrs.    Lowell 

[49] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

introduced  a  resolution,  which  was  adopted,  that 
the  assistant  secretary  be  empowered  to  employ 
extra  clerical  help,  if  necessary,  to  make  up  from  the 
United  States  Census  returns  three  separate  lists  of 
idiot  children,  of  men  and  of  women  under  forty-five 
years  of  age. 

On  December  16  and  17,  1885,  Mrs.  Lowell  pre- 
sented a  report  on  orphan  asylum  societies  of  the 
city  of  New  York. 

On  December  10,  1886,  and  at  previous  meetings 
from  time  to  time,  Mrs.  Lowell  made  reports  on  the 
public  charities  of  New  York  city.  The  following 
is  a  typical  paragraph  of  the  plain  speech  in  these 
reports : 

Almost  the  only  encouraging  fact  about  the  foregoing 
short  record  of  the  events  which  have  taken  place  in  the  char- 
itable institutions  during  the  past  year,  is  that  the  causes  of  the 
evils  are  patent,  and,  therefore,  improvements  can  be  made 
as  soon  as  public  opinion  really  demands  a  reform. 

On  July  13,  1887,  Mrs.  Lowell  reported  on  the 
workhouse  of  New  York  city.  A  later  report  on  the 
same  subject  was  presented  to  the  board  on  Decem- 
ber 13,  1888,  and  printed  in  the  twenty-second  an- 
nual report  of  the  board  for  1888.  The  character- 
istic opening  paragraphs  of  this  report  are  as  follows : 

It  is  incredible  that  such  an  institution  as  the  workhouse 
of  New  York  City  should  be  allowed  to  exist  in  a  civilized 
community,  and  there  are  no  words  strong  enough  to  paint 
its  conditions,  or  to  describe  the  injury  and  disgrace  which 
it  is  to  the  city. 

In  saying  this  I  do  not  wish  to  be  supposed  to  reflect  upon 
the  officer  in  charge;  he  feels  more  deeply  than  anyone  less 
intimately  acquainted  with  them,  the  horrors  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  there  are  among  his  subordinates  those  who  labor 

[50] 


IN  MEMORIAM:  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

faithfully  and  sacrifice  themselves  in  vain  efforts  to  accom- 
plish   some   good. 

The  responsibility  rests  first  with  the  system,  by  which  in 
the  Department  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction  the  care 
of  14,000  men,  women  and  children,  criminals,  sick,  insane, 
idiots,  prostitutes,  infants  and  tramps  is  placed  upon  three 
men,  who  cannot  have  either  the  time  or  the  knowledge  to 
discharge  the  manifold,  distinct  duties  demanded  of  them; 
and  second,  with  the  commissioners,  who  accept  responsi- 
bilities without  protest,  without  any  attempt  to  change  the 
system,  and,  apparently,  without  any  real  sense  of  the  appall- 
ing moral  demands  that  confront  them. 

On  July  n,  1889,  Mrs.  Lowell  made  an  adverse 
report  in  relation  to  the  proposed  organization  of 
an  aslyum  for  orphans,  half-orphans  and  destitute 
Italian  children,  concluding  with  the  suggestion  that 
when  foreign  children  are  supported  in  this  country 
by  public  funds  they  should  be  brought  up  as  Amer- 
icans and  not  as  foreigners. 

At  the  same  meeting,  Mrs.  Lowell  presented  an- 
other report  in  relation  to  dependent  children  in 
New  York  city,  and  in  the  following  December  she 
closed  her  services  in  the  state  board  with  a  supple- 
ment to  this  report. 


I  5'  J 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


MRS   LOWELL  AND   THE   UNEMPLOYED 

ORGANIZING  THE  EAST  SIDE  RELIEF  WORK  COM- 
MITTEE 

JOHN  BANCROFT  DEVINS,  D.  D. 


JUST  now  when  Christendom   is   rejoicing  over 
the  fact  that     thirty  Christian   bodies,  repre- 
senting eighteen  million    communicants,  have 
held  a  conference  in  New  York  city  attended 
by  more  than  five  hundred  delegates,  it  is  pleasant 
to  recall  a  form  of  co-operative  work  which  existed 
a  dozen  years  ago  for  a  winter,  and  out  of  which  grew 
a  permanent  organization  which  is  acknowledged  to 
be  the  direct  ancestor  of  the  great  meeting  just  held 
in  Carnegie  Hall.* 

In  the  fall  of  1893,  when  unusual  distress  pre- 
vailed throughout  the  country  and  naturally  reached 
its  most  acute  form  in  this  city,  steps  were  taken  by 
Mrs.  Lowell  to  relieve  the  suffering  that  was  all  too 
apparent,  and  to  do  this  without  injuring  those  to 
whom  relief  must  be  given  if  life  was  to  be  saved. 
It  was  an  abnormal  condition  which  confronted  the 
charitable  societies;  no  treasury  could  meet  the  de- 
mand upon  it,  and  if  direct  relief  were  possible,  Mrs. 
Lowell  and  her  friends  believed  that  it  would  not  be 
wise  to  give  it. 

Committees  were  formed  by  this  public-spirited 

*   Inter-church  Conference  on  Federation,  held  in  Carnegie  Hall,  Nov- 
ember 15  to  21,  1905, 

[52] 


IN  MEMQRIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

woman — some  to  raise  funds  and  another  to  dis- 
pense the  money  secured  by  the  citizens'  committees. 
As  the  pastor  of  Hope  Chapel  in  East  Fourth  street, 
near  Avenue  D,  it  was  an  honor  to  be  invited  to  join 
a  dozen  other  residents  of  that  part  of  the  city,  and 
a  few  people  from  up-town,  in  forming  the  East  Side 
Relief  Work  Committee.  Headquarters  were  estab- 
lished in  the  College  Settlement  in  Rivington  Street, 
then  under  Dr.  Jane  E.  Robbins,  and  a  busy  place 
No.  95  became  for  five  months.  Our  committee, 
headed  by  Mrs.  Lowell,  was  composed  of  workers 
from  settlements,  charity  organization  districts, 
churches  and  other  agencies,  including  Roman 
Catholic  and  Hebrew. 

And  now  we  are  assembled  in  the  parlors  of  the 
settlement  to  outline  forms  of  work,  for  direct  relief 
is  prohibited  from  the  beginning.  "Anyone  who 
has  ideas  on  the  subject,  speak  first,"  says  the  chair- 
man with  a  cheery  smile,  but  with  the  air  of  one 
who  wishes  to  help  her  fellows  in  distress  without 
injuring  others  who  are  living  on  the  border  line 
between  dependence  and  independence. 

"Let  us  help  the  city  clean  the  streets  on  the  East 
Side/'  suggested  a  member.  "But  will  we  be  al- 
lowed to  do  this  ?"  questions  another. 

"And  if  we  are,  may  not  those  who  are  employed 
as  street  sweepers  be  laid  off  ?"  asks  the  chairman. 
"In  that  case  we  shall  not  relieve,  but  simply  trans- 
fer the  suffering." 

A  committee  was  appointed  to  ascertain  what  the 
street  cleaning  commissioner  would  allow,  and  what 
steps  he  would  take  in  reference  to  his  own  employes. 
The  answer  was  entirely  satisfactory.  Our  men 
could  be  employed  upon  assigned  streets,  and  not  a 
city  man  would  be  laid  off;  the  mileage  required  to 

[53] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

be  kept  clean  was  so  great  that  the  force  could  be 
doubled  without  trouble. 

Brooms  and  hoes  and  shovels  were  purchased, 
foremen  engaged  to  see  that  the  men  did  their  work 
and  did  it  well,  and  sixteen  sweepers  were  set  at 
work.  The  foremen  were  necessary,  Mrs.  Lowell 
said,  for  it  was  not  wise  to  set  a  low  standard  of 
work.  The  men  employed  should  be  made  to  feel 
that  they  were  to  give  a  fair  equivalent  for  the 
money  that  they  received.  The  question  of  hours 
and  wages  was  discussed  at  some  length.  It  was 
not  deemed  wise  to  pay  the  regular  wages  of  street 
sweepers  lest  men  should  leave  less  remunerative 
employment,  nor  was  it  deemed  just  to  exact  a  full 
day's  work  when  a  partial  day's  wages  were  paid. 
A  dollar  a  day  and  seven  hours  work  were  finally  de- 
cided upon  as  equitable. 

One  sweeping  station  after  another  was  opened, 
one  of  them  in  the  basement  of  Hope  Chapel,  until 
887  men  were  at  work  at  a  given  time;  3,292  men  in 
all  were  engaged.  The  streets  of  the  East  Side 
had  not  been  so  clean  before  in  a  decade;  Colonel 
Waring  had  not  been  appointed  then.  It  may  be  of 
interest  to  add  that  when  he  was  appointed  street 
cleaning  commissioner  by  Mayor  Strong,  he  adopted 
the  block  method  employed  by  our  committee, 
rather  than  the  gang  method  in  force  before  that 
time,  and  his  "white  angel"  costume  was  added  in 
order  that  the  foremen  might  the  more  easily  dis- 
cover whether  the  man  assigned  to  a  given  series  of 
blocks  was  at  work  upon  them. 

But  when  all  the  men  who  could  sweep  were  at 
work,  and  the  cry  of  the  hungry  and  the  starving 
came  to  the  ears  of  our  chairman,  she  said:  "What 
more  can  be  done  ?"  This  time  the  making  of 

[54] 


IN  MEMQRIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

clothing  was  suggested,  but  how  to  carry  out  the 
suggestion  and  what  to  do  with  the  clothing  after  it 
was  made  was  the  problem.  To  sell  the  garments 
or  to  give  them  away  would  lessen  by  so  much  the 
demand  for  those  turned  out  by  the  regular  garment 
makers,  and  this  might  lead  to  the  discharge  of 
some  of  them;  this  would  never  do.  About  this 
time  news  of  a  cyclone  off  the  shores  of  South  Caro- 
lina was  printed  in  the  paper;  rooms  in  an  idle  fac- 
tory were  hired,  cloth  purchased,  a  few  trained 
employes  secured  and  an  emergency  garment  factory 
was  running  under  the  auspices  of  our  committee. 

Still  the  applicants  came  with  their  terrible  tales 
of  suffering,  which  were  investigated  and  found  to 
be  all  too  true. 

"Give  this  man  work,"  wrote  a  physician,  "if  you 
would  keep  his  wife  and  children  alive;  one  child 
has  already  died  from  starvation."  Other  appeals 
scarcely  less  terrible  lay  on  the  chairman's  heart 
like  lead.  "Let  us  send  out  work  to  the  women  and 
girls  who  cannot  go  to  the  factory,"  she  said;  and 
the  young  people's  prayer-meeting  room  and  a 
pastor's  study  were  added  to  those  needed  for  the 
enlarged  work.  But  what  more  can  be  done  for 
the  men  ? 

"Let  us  clean  and  whitewash  the  tenement  cellars," 
said  Miss  Edith  Kendall,  a  member  of  the  committee. 
"The  health  commissioner  will  not  let  you  do  it. 
If  he  did,  the  owners  and  the  tenants  will  not  allow 
you  in  their  houses,"  suggested  a  doubter,  not  the 
chairman.  An  appropriation  of  twenty-five  dollars 
for  the  coming  week  was  granted  for  the  use  of  the 
sanitation  committee,  provided  permission  was  se- 
cured for  starting  the  work.  Not  only  was  Charles 
G.  Wilson,  the  president  of  the  health  board,  willing 

[55] 


IN  MEMQRIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

that  the  experiment  should  be  tried,  but  he  also 
heartily  commended  the  movement.  When  within 
a  month  491  men  were  under  direct  control  of  this 
sub-committee  and  the  weekly  pay-roll  was  $3,000, 
the  provisional  appropriation  of  twenty-five  dollars 
furnished  a  good  deal  of  amusement.  The  figures 
for  this  department  were:  700  houses,  comprising 
3,000  rooms,  800  halls,  500  cellars,  250  shops,  stables, 
lofts  whitewashed;  2,500  halls  and  2,200  rooms 
cleaned  and  scrubbed;  and  3,485  barrels  of  refuse 
taken  from  tenement  cellars;  1,153  men  employed. 

In  April,  1894,  the  stress  of  the  winter  being  over, 
it  was  decided  to  close  up  the  work  and  this  was 
done  gradually.  During  the  five  months  4,541  men 
and  466  women  had  been  aided,  and  this  without  a 
penny  of  direct  relief  being  given,  although  $117,- 
091.72  had  been  expended  by  the  committee.  Dur- 
ing those  trying  months  Mrs.  Lowell  gave  her 
entire  time  to  the  work  of  the  committee.  No  mem- 
ber of  it  was  more  indefatigable,  though  all  did  their 
best.  And  when  perplexities  arose,  as  they  did 
several  times,  and  strained  nerves  were  almost 
snapping,  like  a  benediction  the  gentle  voice  of  our 
chairman  would  fall  upon  our  ears,  and  with  some- 
thing like  confusion  of  face  on  the  part  of  the  over- 
tired members,  the  trying  situation  would  soon  be 
relieved. 

When  the  work  of  the  winter  was  completed,  our 
committee,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  chairman,  took 
an  extraordinary  step.  While  recognizing  that  it 
had  been  the  one  thing  to  do  at  the  time,  we  adopted 
a  resolution  condemning  in  the  main  the  kind  of 
work  which  we  had  found  to  be  effectiye,  lest  other 
communities  or  other  committees  in  this  city 
might  think  they  had  unusual  conditions  also,  and 

[56] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

cite  our  experience  as  a  precedent  for  establishing 
a  similar  work.  In  this  self-abnegation,  no  less 
than  in  her  magnificent  labor  during  the  winter,  Mrs. 
Lowell  showed  her  power  as  a  leader. 

Another  form  of  philanthropic  activity  in  which 
the  writer  had  the  pleasure  of  co-operating  with  Mrs. 
Lowell  was  in  organizing  and  conducting  the  con- 
ference of  charities,  which  held  its  meetings  for 
several  years  in  the  library  of  the  Charity  Organi- 
zation Society.  Here  important  topics  were  dis- 
cussed in  an  able  manner  by  experts,  and  advance 
steps  taken  on  several  subjects.  One  thing  on 
which  Mrs.  Lowell's  heart  was  set  was  a  farm  colony 
for  misdemeanants.  Again  and  again  this  matter 
was  up,  and  bills  prepared,  but  the  legislature  would 
not  enact  them. "  While  recognizing  the  need  of 
such  a  place  for  men  now  sent  to  the  workhouse, 
only  to  come  out  worse  than  they  enter  it,  the  men 
in  Albany  would  not  start  it.  Sometime  this  seed- 
sowing  will  be  a  harvest. 

Mrs.  Lowell's  relations  to  the  recent  Federation 
Conference  can  be  traced  through  the  Federation  of 
East  Side  Workers,  organized  a  month  after  the 
relief  committee  was  disbanded.  It  was  started  in 
Hope  Chapel  and  contained  in  its  membership  many 
of  the  members  of  the  committee.  Its  object  was 
to  study  the  conditions  among  the  city  of  a  quarter 
of  a  million  of  people  living  south  of  Fourteenth 
Street,  and  east  of  Broadway,  and  seek  to  improve 
them.  Its  membership  consisted  of  pastors,  priests 
and  rabbis,  of  churches  and  synagogues,  one  mem- 
ber from  these  religious  bodies,  and  officers  and 
members  of  philanthropic  agencies  laboring  in  the 
district.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  suggested  as  president, 
but  she  named  the  writer  for  that  office.  The  suc- 

[57] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

cess  of  this  federation,  in  which  President  Roosevelt, 
Colonel  Waring,  Jacob  A.  Riis,  Bishop  Potter  and 
other  lovers  of  their  kind  were  deeply  interested, 
led  to  the  formation  of  the  New  York  City  Federa- 
tion of  Churches  and  Christian  Organizations;  later 
came  the  state  federation  and  then  the  national 
federation,  which  called  the  Carnegie  Hall  meeting, 
held  in  November.  If  Mrs.  Lowell  had  not  formed 
the  East  Side  Relief  Work  Committee,  the  Federa- 
tion of  East  Side  Workers  might  not  have  been 
organized,  certainly  not  at  that  time.  If — but  why 
speculate  ?  She  did  her  work  thoroughly,  con- 
scientiously, caring  only  that  the  poor  were  relieved, 
without  being  pauperized.  Apparently  indifferent 
to  the  censure  which  the  work  in  which  she  was 
engaged  might  bring,  she  was  not  oblivious  to  the 
many  tokens  of  kindness  which  she  received.  In  a 
private  meeting  when  attention  was  called  to  her 
unselfish  devotion  to  a  certain  line  of  activity,  she 
said,  with  refreshing  candor: 

"I  shouldn't  like  to  hear  those  kind  words,  but  I 
do."  Would  that  more  even  had  been  spoken  when 
she  could  have  enjoyed  them,  for  she  deserved  them 
all. 


[58] 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


MRS.  LOWELL  AND  THE  CONSUMERS' 
LEAGUE 

MAUD  NATHAN 


MRS.  LOWELL  was  one  of  the  founders  of 
the  Consumers'  League  and  was  its  first 
president.  The  movement  was  the  out- 
come of  some  inquiries  made  by  the  Work- 
ing Women's  Society  into  the  conditions  under 
which  women  and  children  worked  in  the  dry-goods 
stores  of  New  York  City.  The  pitiable  tales  of  over- 
worked young  girls,  who  received  wretched  pay,  and 
who  were  on  duty  excessively  long  hours  without  any 
form  of  legal  protection,  had  led  some  of  the  most 
advanced  working  women  to  form  this  society  for 
the  purpose  of  ameliorating  their  own  conditions  of 
labor.  But  it  was  found  that  organization  among 
wage-earners  could  do  little,  as  this  particular  class 
of  workers  is,  as  a  rule,  too  young  and  too  unskilled 
to  make  the  formation  of  trade  unions  practicable. 
It  was  felt  that  much  of  the  responsibility  for  bad 
conditions  of  labor  should  be  placed  on  the  spenders 
of  money,  and  that  their  co-operation  should  be 
enlisted. 

A  public  mass  meeting  was  therefore  held  in  May, 
1 890,  at  which  a  resolution  was  passed  recommending, 
in  Mrs.  Lowell's  words,  that  "a  committee  be  ap- 

[59] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

pointed  to  assist  the  Working  Women's  Society  in 
making  a  list  which  shall  keep  shoppers  informed  of 
such  shops  as  deal  justly  by  their  employes,  and  so 
keep  public  opinion  and  public  action  to  bear  in 
favor  of  just  employers,  and  also  in  favor  of  such 
employers  as  desire  to  be  just,  but  are  prevented  by 
the  stress  of  competition  from  following  their  sense 
of  duty." 

This  was  the  beginning  of  the  Consumers'  League. 
The  following  fall,  Mrs.  Lowell,  with  a  small  band  of 
workers,  entered  heart  and  soul  into  the  work  of 
investigating  the  conditions  of  employment  in  the 
largest  retail  stores  of  the  city,  after  sending  out 
several  thousand  letters  asking  merchants  to  allow 
their  stores  to  be  visited.  The  conditions  and  regu- 
lations of  a  few  leading  firms  were  taken  as  the  basis 
of  the  league's  standard  of  a  fair  house,  as  to 
hours,  wages  and  physical  conditions.  These  mer- 
chants were  known  to  conduct  their  business  fairly, 
having  just  conditions  for  all  their  employes,  so 
that  it  was  not  too  much  to  ask  that  all  competing 
firms  should  maintain  the  same  standard. 

Eight  names  were  placed  on  the  first  White  List, 
which  was  printed  in  the  newspapers  and  widely 
distributed  through  the  community.  In  the  be- 
ginning the  investigators  often  met  with  difficulties. 
A  member  of  the  committee  would  report  that  a 
firm  did  not  wish  to  be  placed  on  the  White  List. 
Mrs.  Lowell  would  then  say:  "  We  can't  help  that, 
we  are  sorry  they  don't  approve  of  us,  but  if  they 
have  good  conditions  we  shall  place  them  on  the 
White  List.  We  will  get  information  from  the  girls 
themselves,  and  if  the  firms  are  just  they  must  get 
on  the  White  List." 

Once  when  Mrs.  Lowell  was  investigating  a  store, 

[60] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

she  found  that  the  cash  girls  were  paid  $1,50  a  week. 
She  asked  a  member  of  the  firm  whether  he  did  not 
think  the  wages  very  low.  He  answered  that  it  was 
"a  question  of  economics.  If  we  can  get  girls  to 
come  at  that  price,  why  should  we  pay  more  ? 
Plenty  are  willing  to  come  for  that  price."  Mrs. 
Lowell  said,  "Do  you  think  that  is  a  fair  wage  to  pay 
for  a  week's  work  ?  One  dollar  and  fifty  cents  will 
hardly  pay  for  their  shoe  leather."  He  replied: 
"  Well,  I  tell  you,  if  I  see  that  the  children  are  very 
ragged  or  poor,  I  give  them  a  pair  of  shoes."  Then 
she  said:  "Would  it  not  be  better  for  their  self- 
respect  to  pay  them  fair  wages  and  let  them  buy 
their  own  shoes?"  The  answer  was:  "We  never 
confuse  our  charity  and  our  business."  To  which 
Mrs.  Lowell  replied:  "It  seems  to  me  that  you  are 
confusing  them  in  a  very  peculiar  way;  I  think  it 
would  be  a  great  deal  better  for  you  to  pay  a  fair 
wage." 

Mrs.  Lowell  gave  important  testimony  before  the 
Rhinehart  Commission,  in  1896,  on  the  great  need 
of  enforcing  a  law  to  provide  seats  for  women  who 
work  in  stores.  She  was  influential  in  having  the 
Mercantile  Inspection  Act  (proposed  by  the  com- 
mission) made  into  a  law,  and  was  keenly  interested 
in  the  appointment  of  efficient  mercantile  inspectors 
to  enforce  the  new  law.  Referring  to  the  civil  ser- 
vice examinations  for  these  officers,  Mrs.  Lowell 
said:  "What  I  should  have  suggested,  had  I  written, 
was  such  an  examination  as  would  have  assured  a 
high  order  of  general  intelligence,  so  as  to  be  sure  of 
getting  educated  women,  perhaps  doctors,  who 
would  be  respected  by  shopkeepers.  In  all  civil 
service  examinations  that  is  what  I  think  we  most 
need,  a  high  standard  as  to  intelligence  and  charac- 

[61  ] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

ter,  so  as  to  get  a  new  kind  of  person  into  our  public 
offices.  We  are  ready  now  to  take  the  people  who 
are  below  the  average,  and  we  ought  to  insist  on 
their  being  above  it." 

What  impressed  me  most  in  Mrs.  Lowell's  char- 
acter was  her  unflinching  sense  of  duty,  and  her  won- 
derful zeal.  Her  work  was  always  done  because  she 
felt  it  was  right,  not  at  all  with  any  idea  of  merit 
in  itself.  She  was  free  from  all  idea  of  self-aggran- 
dizement and  gave  herself  up  to  any  work  she  under- 
took with  unstinted  energy.  In  September,  1896, 
returning  from  Europe,  immediately  on  her  arrival 
she  wrote  me:  "And  now  we  must  get  to  work. 
Can  you  go  with  me  next  week  on  Tuesday,  Thurs- 
day, and  Friday  mornings  ?"  Such  was  her  zeal  in 
any  cause  in  which  she  was  enlisted;  for  she  did 
everything  she  thought  right  to  be  done,  no  matter 
at  what  sacrifice  of  money,  time  or  strength. 

Mrs.  Lowell  endeared  herself  to  all  her  friends  by 
her  charm  of  manner,  her  sweet  simplicity,  her  high 
principles,  her  code  of  pure  ethics.  Every  one 
who  came  in  contact  with  her  was  the  better  for 
having  known  her.  Every  organization  and  social 
group  working  for  justice,  for  righteousness,  for  the 
uplift  of  humanity,  will  mourn  her  loss. 


[62] 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


MRS.  LOWELL  AND  THE  NEW  YORK 
CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY 


IN  the  account  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  services  to  the 
state,  published  on  an  earlier  page,  refer- 
ence is  .made  to  her  official  action  as  a 
commissioner  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities 
in  bringing  about  the  establishment  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  of  the  City  of  New  York. 
She  was  chairman  of  the  committee  appointed  to 
carry  into  effect  the  resolution  adopted  by  the 
board,  and  a  member  of  the  governing  body  from 
the  beginning  of  the  society's  work  until  her  death. 
So  long  as  she  remained  in  the  State  Board  of 
Charities  she  was  an  ex  officio  member  of  the  central 
council  by  the  terms  of  the  society's  constitution. 
Upon  her  retirement  from  the  state  board  she  became 
an  elective  member  and  was  regularly  re-elected 
thereafter  to  each  expiration  of  her  three-year  term. 
She  served  as  a  member  of  the  executive  com- 
mittee for  twenty  years,  and  as  chairman  of  the 
committee  on  district  work  for  fifteen.  She  was  a 
member  at  various  times  of  the  committee  on  co- 
operation, the  committee  on  provident  habits,  the 
committee  on  woodyard,  and  the  committee  on 
philanthropic  education.  She  was  chairman  of  the 
committee  on  dependent  children  during  the  four 
years  of  the  active  work  of  that  committee.  She 

[63] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

was  a  member  of  the  central  district  committee  for 
three  years  until  1894,  and  thereafter,  until  her 
death,  the  most  active  and  faithful  member  of  the 
district  committee  on  the  lower  East  Side,  which  is 
known  as  Corlears  district  committee. 

That  Mrs.  Lowell  expected  active  work  from  those 
who  were  associated  with  her  was  promptly  shown 
in  one  of  the  earliest  meetings  of  the  committee  on 
district  work,  held  on  February  12,  1883,  when  it 
was  decided  to  assign  to  each  member  of  the  com- 
mittee one  district  office  to  visit  twice  a  week.  Her 
desire  that  the  society  should  not  itself  become  an 
ordinary  relief  agency  is  shown  by  the  adoption  of  a 
resolution  on  April  29,  1886,  by  the  committee  on 
district  work,  Mrs.  Lowell  in  the  chair: 

That  the  several  district  committes  be  reminded  that  it  is 
opposed  to  the  principles  to  which  the  Charity  Organization 
Society  holds,  to  allow  the  agents  of  the  society  or  any  mem- 
ber of  the  district  committees  in  their  official  capacity  to 
disburse  money  or  gifts  of  any  kind  to  any  applicant.  If 
such  disbursement  seem  to  be  necessary  in  any  urgent  case, 
it  is  hoped  that  the  committee  will  arrange  to  secure  the  relief 
through  some  charitable  institution  or  third  party  who  is  not 
known  as  connected  with  our  society. 

Mrs.  Lowell  was  in  active  sympathy  with  the 
increased  attention  given  by  the  society  in  recent 
years  to  educational  and  constructive  work.  She 
was  the  first  member  of  the  council  to  endorse  the 
suggestion  that  the  Charity  Organization  Society 
should  initiate  the  housing  movement  which  led 
to  the  passage  of  the  tenement-house  law  of  1900. 
She  was  an  enthusiastic  worker  for  small  parks  and 
play-grounds,  and  was  a  leader  in  the  movement 
which  led  to  the  abolition  of  the  vicious  police- 

[64] 


IN  MEMORIAM  .-JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

station  lodging-houses,  and  the  establishment  of 
the  municipal  lodging-house,  under  the  manage- 
ment of  the  Department  of  Public  Charities.  She 
was  a  member  from  the  beginning  of  the  committee 
in  charge  of  the  Summer  School  of  Philanthropy, 
out  of  which  the  professional  training  school  for 
social  workers  has  grown,  and  long  before  the  sum- 
mer school  was  established  it  was  her  custom  to 
hold  meetings  of  district  agents  and  of  assistant 
agents  as  a  means  of  giving  training  to  the  inex- 
perienced, and  counsel  and  encouragement  to  those 
who  had  been  longer  at  work.  She  was  ever  ready 
to  insist  upon  frank  criticism  of  corrupt,  ignorant, 
or  inefficient  public  officials,  and  equally  ready  to 
give  hearty  praise  to  those  who  were  doing  well, 
regardless  of  their  political  affiliations. 


The  minutes  of  the  central  council  and  of  the 
executive  committee  of  the  society  record  on  almost 
every  page  actions  which  she  proposed  or  actively 
advocated;  but  to  suppose  that  she  was  always 
with  the  majority,  or  that  the  measures  which  she 
proposed  were  always  adopted,  would  be  to  miss  the 
main  service  which  such  as  Mrs.  Lowell  always 
render  in  the  movements  with  which  they  are  identi- 
fied. She  was  extraordinarily  practical  and  suc- 
cessful for  an  idealist,  but  she  was  so  much  of  an 
idealist,  nevertheless,  that  to  others  her  plans 
sometimes  seemed  visionary  and  impractical. 

A  long  and  instructive  story  might  be  told  of  the 
measures  for  which  Mrs.  Lowell  worked  before  the 
legislature,  in  municipal  departments,  or  in  the 
public  press,  but  which  have  not  yet  been  achieved. 
As  illustrations,  it  is  sufficient  to  name  her  plan  for 

[65] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

a  department  of  children,  the  proposal  for  a  farm 
colony  for  vagrants,  and  the  inspiring  suggestion 
that  instead  of  our  present  prisons,  police  force, 
courts  and  prosecuting  officials,  there  should  be 
created  a  great  public  department  on  the  reduction 
of  crime,  of  which  the  police  and  judicial  activities 
now  in  existence  should  be  subordinate  bureaus. 
It  may  be  that  later  generations  will  accomplish 
some  of  these  things  for  which  Mrs.  Lowell  was  not 
able  in  her  lifetime  to  secure  a  sufficient  number  of 
friends  with  faith  equal  to  her  own. 


On  the  day  after  the  announcement  of  Mrs.  Low- 
ell's death,  CHARITIES  published  on  one  of  the  cover 
pages  the  following  editorial  paragraphs: 

A  foremost  citizen,  a  pure  patriot,  a  good  neighbor  to  the 
poor  and  to  all  men,  has  gone  to  rest  in  the  death  of  Joseph- 
ine Shaw  Lowell — or  as  she  preferred  always,  in  loyal  de- 
votion, to  have  others  write  her  name — Mrs.  Charles  Russell 
Lowell,  though  the  husband  of  her  youth  was  killed  at  Cedar 
Creek,  as  was  her  brother  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  at  the  head  of 
his  Negro  regiment  at  Fort  Wagner.  With  two  such  sacri- 
fices to  treasure  in  her  memory,  Mrs.  Lowell  earned  the  right, 
which  for  forty  years  she  has  exercised  with  high  courage 
and  indomitable  energy,  to  serve  her  country  with  an  eye 
single  to  its  highest  interest. 

She  has  championed  unpopular  causes  when  she  believed 
they  were  right.  She  has  known  nothing  of  mere  expediency, 
but  she  worked  nevertheless  with  rare  wisdom  and  with 
remarkable  success.  No  friend  was  too  intimate  for  her  to 
rebuke  when  there  was  occasion,  no  interest  too  important 
for  her  to  imperil  by  frank  criticism  if  it  were  linked  with 
injustice.  A  certain  wholesome  uneasiness  was  never  absent 
from  her  fellow  workers  lest  Mrs.  Lowell  should  put  her  finger 
upon  some  indefensible  method,  some  failure  to  remain  stead- 

[66] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

fastly  true  to  the  nobler  ends,  which  more  complaisant  com- 
rades would  be  inclined  to  overlook  as  necessary  evils  or 
incidental  lapses.  And  yet  the  reproof  was  always  so  free 
from  malice,  so  clearly  the  expression  of  deeper  spiritual  in- 
sight and  so  charitable  withal,  that  the  uneasiness  at  last  gave 
way  to  relief  and  renewed  appreciation  of  the  immeasurable 
value  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  presence. 

This  is  not  the  time  to  attempt  a  catalogue  of  Mrs.  Lowell's 
actual  achievements.  Her  monument  is  built  in  the  consti- 
tution and  statutes  of  New  York  and  other  states,  in  charitable 
and  reformatory  institutions  which  except  for  her  would  not 
have  been  established,  in  the  successful  fight  for  the  merit 
system  in  the  public  service,  in  an  impress  on  the  labor  move- 
ment, on  the  social  settlements,  on  the  new  ideals  of  inde- 
pendence in  municipal  affairs.  There  are  few  who  read  these 
paragraphs  who  will  not  have  besides  the  general  sense  of  loss 
in  the  death  of  such  a  leader  in  social  reform,  some  feeling  of 
personal  grief,  some  distinct  reason  for  appreciating  that  the 
loss  to  the  community  and  to  all  its  good  causes  is  very  great. 

We  of  CHARITIES  and  of  the  New  York  Charity  Organi- 
zation Society  have  indeed  the  right  to  share  in  an  expression 
of  personal  bereavement.  Mrs.  Lowell  was  the  founder  of  the 
Charity  Organization  Society  and  for  the  twenty-three  years, 
since  as  a  commissioner  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  she 
called  the  society  into  existence,  she  has  been  its  most  faith- 
ful, untiring  and  efficient  member.  She,  more  than  any  other 
person — although  it  has  never  been,  and  she  and  other  associ- 
ates were  always  determined  that  it  should  never  be,  a  one- 
man  society — has  been  its  guiding  spirit. 

She  has  served  continuously  on  its  central  council  and  its 
executive  committee  and  has  also  worked  always  on  the  more 
humble  routine  of  its  district  work.  Only  a  few  days  before 
her  death  she  had  written  to  the  president  expressing  regret 
that  she  could  not  attend  committee  meetings  during  the 
winter  and  a  desire  to  be  allowed  to  remain  in  the  central 
council.  We  mourn  the  loss  of  one  whose  place  cannot  be 
filled,  whose  services  will  never  be  forgotten,  whose  work  will 
remain. 


MEMORIAL  VERSE 


MEMORIAL    VERSE 


A  WOMAN  OF  SORROWS 

JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

IT  was  but  yesterday  she  walked  these  streets, 
Making  them  holier.     How  many  years 
With  all  her  widowed  love  immeasurably 
She  ministered  unto  the  abused  and  stricken, 
And  all  the  oppressed  and  suffering  of  mankind, — 
Herself  forgetting,  but  never  those  in  need; 
Her  whole,  sweet  soul  lost  in  her  loving  work, 
Pondering  the  endless  problem  of  the  poor. 

In  ceaseless  labor,  swift,  unhurriedly, 
She  sped  upon  her  tireless  ministries, 
Climbing  the  stairs  of  poverty  and  wrong, 
Endeavoring  the  help  that  shall  not  hurt; 
Seeking  to  build  in  every  human  heart 
A  temple  of  justice — that  no  brother's  burden 
Should  heavier  prove  through  human  selfishness. 

In  memory  I  see  that  brooding  face 
That  now  seemed  dreaming  of  the  heroic  past 
When  those  most  dear  to  her  laid  loyal  lives 
On  the  high  altar  of  freedom;  and  again 
That  thinking,  inward-lighted  countenance 
Drooped,  saddened  by  the  pain  of  humankind, 
Though  resolute  to  help  where  help  might  be, 
And  with  undying  faith  illuminate. 

She  was  our  woman  of  sorrows,  whose  pure  heart 
Was  pierced  by  many  woes.    And  yet  long  since 

[71  ] 


MEMORIAL  VERSE 


Her  soul  of  sympathy  entered  the  peace 

And  calm  eternal  of  the  eternal  mind; 

Inheritor  of  noble  lives,  she  held 

Even  to  the  end,  a  spirit  of  cheerfulness, 

And  knowledge  keen  of  the  deep  joy  of  being 

By  pain  all  unsubdued.     Sister  and  saint, 

Who  to  life's  darkened  passage-ways  brought  light; 

Who  taught  the  dignity  of  human  service; 

Who  made  the  city  noble  by  her  life; 

And  sanctified  the  very  stones  her  feet 

Pressed  in  their  sacred  "journeys. 

Most  high  God! 

This  city  of  mammon,  this  wide,  seething  pit 
Of  avarice  and  lust,  hath  known  thy  saints, 
And  yet  shall  know.     For  faith  than  sin  is  mightier, 
And  t>y  this  faith  we  live, — that  in  thy  time, 
In  thine  own  time,  the  good  shall  crush  the  ill; 
The  brute  within  the  human  shall  die  down; 
And  love  and  justice  reign,  where  hate  prevents, — 
That  love  which  in  pure  hearts  reveals  thine  own 
And  lights  the  world  to  righteousness  and  truth. 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER. 
From  CHARITIES  AND  THE  COMMONS,  January  3,  1906. 


[72] 


MEMORIAL    VERSE 


T 


THE  SERVICE-TREE 
(To  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL) 

HERE'S  an  old  Icelandic  rune, 
Chanted  to  a  mournful  tune, 
Of  the  service-tree,  that  grows 
O'er  the  sepulchres  of  those 

Who  for  others'  sins  have  died, — 

Others'  hatred,  greed,  or  pride, — 

Living  monuments  that  stand, 

Planted  of  no  human  hand. 

So  from  her  fresh-flowered  grave — 
Her's  who  all  her  being  gave 
Other  lives  to  beautify, 
Other  ways  to  purify — 
There  shall  spring  a  spirit-tree, 
In  her  loving  memory, 
Till  its  top  shall  reach  the  skies, 
Telling  of  her  sacrifice. 

JOHN  FINLEY. 

From  the  CENTURY  MAGAZINE,  MAY,  1906. 


t73l 


MEMORIAL    VERSE 


A  CITY'S  SAINT 

JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

A       WOMAN  lived  and  now  a  woman  dies;" 
/\        If  that  were  all,  this  line  were  much  too 
/Y         long; 

But  with  her  went  from  out  our  social  skies 
A  light,  and  voice  like  a  remembered  song. 

Some  saints  have  lived  who  on  the  ensanguined  field 
Walked  with  the  balm  of  healing  in  their  hands; 

And  not  until  the  eye  of  God  is  sealed 

Fadeth  the  glory  where  some  woman  stands, 

Shedding  strange  radiance  from  her  tender  eyes; 

Now  in  the  town,  and  now  in  court  or  camp — 
Some  woman  with  her  deed  of  sacrifice, 

Lighting  the  world  like  an  eternal  lamp. 

And  she  to  whom  War's  tragedy  of  pain 

Had  brought  its  tears — whose  husband,  brother, 
friend 

Passed  in  the  cannonading  to  the  slain — 
Walked  with  her  lonely  sorrow  to  the  end. 

But  in  that  sorrow's  self-forgetfulness 

She  wrought  whose  splendid  task  is  done  too  soon; 
Because  she  lived,  the  evil  days  are  less 

Bridging  these  civic  nights  to  highest  noon. 

[74] 


MEMORIAL  VERSE 


And  mid  the  populous  town,  its  walls  that  rise, 
Its  massive  structures  wrought  of  myriad  hands, 

This  story  of  a  woman's  sacrifice 

Shines  like  a  beacon  where  the  city  stands. 

This  shall  outlive  its  mortar  and  its  stone, 
This  shall  be  told  where  cities  rise  and  fall; 

A  woman  working  in  its  way  alone 
With  loving  hands  built  bastions  round  its  wall. 

JOSEPH  DANA  MILLER 

From  THE  OUTLOOK,  January,  1906. 


(75  1 


MEMORIAL   VERSE 


JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

IN  MEMORIAM 


AS  now  and  then  a  star  breaks  through  the 
gloom, 
With  glow  so  strong,  so  tender,  and  serene, 
Dispelling,  one  by  one  the  brooding  clouds — 
Till  midnight  shades  melts  in  the  glow  of  morn — 
So,  now  and  then  a  soul  serene  and  strong 
Shines  downward  through  the  clouds  of  human  pain, 
And  through  the  dark  of  human  need  and  wrong, 
Till,  'neath  its  patient  toil  and  radiant  calm — 
Evil  shrinks  back  abashed,  and  good  is  crowned. 

A  star  like  this  is  for  no  land  or  clime; 

Each  cloud  alike  its  radiance  must  share, 

And  when  its  light  is  lost,  the  whole  earth  mourns. 

A  soul  like  hers  to  the  wide  world  belongs, 

Its  light,  though  sometimes  hid  awhile  or  quenched, 

Flames  ever  at  the  heart  of  human  woes; 

And,  kept  alive  by  those  who  knew  and  loved, 

Becomes  consuming  fire  to  every  wrong 

That  holds  humanity  in  suffering's  thrall. 

Shine  on,  O  Star!  in  life's  oft-clouded  heaven! 
Burn  on,  O  Soul  of  flame!  in  life's  sore  needs. 
Pierce  e'en  our  sadness!    Let  thy  light  be  given 
To  those  who  glad  would  follow  where  it  leads, 
Who  fain  would  change  their  love  and  grief  to  deeds. 

MARY  LOWE  DICKINSON. 

From  the  NEW  YORK  EVENING  POST,  April  14,  1906. 

[76] 


FROM  MANY  SOURCES 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


FROM    MANY    SOURCES 


MRS.  LOWELL'S  death  and  the  memorial 
meeting  which  followed  it  were  the 
occasion  of  many  expressions  of  loss 
and  appreciation,  and  there  were  other 
meetings  on  other  occasions  called  for  other  pur- 
poses, which  from  the  nature  of  the  case  seemed  to 
call  forth  spontaneous  tributes.  The  New  York 
State  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction  adopted 
formal  resolutions  on  her  death,  and  at  a  meeting  of 
the  New  York  Association  of  Neighborhood  Workers, 
one  after  another  of  those  who  were  present  got 
up  and  told  simply  of  how  in  the  early  years  of 
their  work  a  woman  had  found  them  out  and  come 
to  them  with  help  and  suggestions  and  kindness— 
"perhaps  only  to  offer  to  run  errands" — or  to  aid 
in  times  of  strain  and  trouble. 

Extracts  from  some  of  these  communications 
may  be  published  here,  showing  as  they  do  the 
depth  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  relationships  and  the  breadth 
of  her  interests.  "She  was  a  rare  woman  and  has 
helped  us  all,"  wrote  John  M.  Glenn,  from  Baltimore, 
a  former  president  of  the  National  Conference  of 
Charities  and  Correction.  A  telegram  came  from 
David  Blaustein,  head  of  the  Educational  Alliance, 
which  spoke  of  her  as  "an  inspiration  to  workers  in 
the  cause  of  humanity."  There  was  a  letter  from 

[79] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Henry  Rice,  for  thirty  years  president  of  the  United 
Hebrew  Charities,  who  paid  a  tribute  of  esteem  to 
"a  genuine  pioneer  in  the  cause  of  organized  charity, 
whose  heart  and  hand  ever  worked  in  unison  for 
the  improvement  of  the  human  race/'  Dr.  A.  F. 
Schauffler,  of  the  New  York  City  Mission  and  Tract 
Society,  estimated  that  "this  great  city  is  distinctly 
poorer  by  reason  of  her  death.  Her  influence  was 
always  on  the  right  side,  wholesome,  brave  and 
true." 

E.  R.  L.  Gould,  president  of  the  City  and  Subur- 
ban Homes  Company,  wrote  that  in  all  his  acquain- 
tance he  had  "known  few,  either  among  men  or 
women,  who  thought  more  rationally  and  whose 
services  were  more  unselfishly  and  devotedly  ten- 
dered to  humanity  than  were  hers." 

George  B.  Robinson,  of  the  New  York  Catholic 
Protectory,  held  that  "none  of  the  distinguished 
people  to  speak  could  say  too  much  in  honor  of 
her  character  and  service." 

In  a  letter  from  R.  Fulton  Cutting,  president 
of  the  New  York  Association  for  Improving  the 
Condition  of  the  Poor,  was  this  paragraph : 

I  do  not  think  I  have  ever  known  a  more  true  and  dis- 
interested friend  of  humanity  than  Mrs.  Lowell,  nor  one 
of  more  winning  personality.  It  was  the  greatest  pleasure 
to  work  with  her,  and  I  shall  ever  treasure  the  memory  of  my 
own  experience  in  this  connection.  She  was  regarded  as 
holding  radical  views  upon  some  subjects,  but  the  kind  of 
radicalism  she  entertained  is  one  which  we  can  all  adopt  with 
great  profit.  It  was  of  the  heart  and  of  the  spirit  of  Jesus. 

On  behalf  of  the  Society  for  Italian  Immigrants, 
the  executive  committee  placed  on  record  a  tribute 
of  appreciation  for  the  service  rendered  by  Mrs. 

[80] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Lowell  in  connection  with  its  organization,  develop- 
ment and  achievement,  The  names  of  Eliot  Nor- 
ton, W.  F.  Brush  and  Henry  Gregory,  as  this  com- 
mittee, were  signed  to  the  following: 

She  was  one  of  the  first  members  of  the  society,  and  re- 
mained until  her  death  one  of  the  council  of  associates.  Her 
broad  sympathy  with  the  Italian  immigrant,  her  practical 
sagacity  as  to  the  work  that  could  wisely  be  undertaken  in 
his  behalf,  and  her  high-minded  helpfulness  to  all  with  whom 
she  was  associated,  will  remain  a  pleasant  and  inspiring 
memory  to  those  who  were  with  her  in  this  work. 

The  Rev.  Robert  L.  Paddock,  rector  of  the  Church 
of  the  Holy  Apostles,  wrote  as  follows: 

When  the  Committee  for  the  Advancement  of  Public 
Morality  was  being  organized,  some  five  or  six  years  ago, 
Mrs.  Lowell  was  one  of  the  most  trusted  advisers,  and  her 
sense  of  shame  at  what  was  being  permitted  in  this  great  city 
did  much  to  inspire  the  other  members  to  renewed  efforts 
for  the  saving  of  the  poor  girls  in  what  was  known  as  the 
"Red  Light  District."  Her  quiet  confidence,  her  gentle- 
ness, the  reserve  of  power  which  you  were  conscious  could 
be  released  at  the  opportune  moment,  made  her  one  of  the 
greatest  influences  for  good  this  community  has  ever  known. 

From  Thomas  M.  Mulry,  president  of  the  Parti- 
cular Council  of  the  Society  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul, 
came  the  following: 

Mrs.  Lowell  was,  to  my  mind,  one  of  the  most  earnest  and 
intelligent  and  fearless  workers  in  the  cause  of  charity.  There 
were  times  when  we  disagreed  on  methods,  but  there  was 
never  a  time  that  I  did  not  have  the  greatest  respect  and 
esteem  for  her.  Her  great  work  in  the  Charity  Organization 
Society  where  she  did  so  much  to  further  the  spirit  of  co- 
operation should  never  be  forgotten  by  its  members.  She 

[8,  ] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

was  preeminently  the  most  untiring,  unselfish  and  self-sacri- 
ficing person  with  whom  I  have  had  the  privilege  to  be  asso- 
ciated in  that  organization,  and  her  life's  work  should  be  an 
inspiration  to  others  to  follow  in  her  footsteps.  My  rela- 
tions with  her  date  back  many  years,  they  were  at  all  times 
pleasant,  and  our  differences  of  opinion  never  interfered  with 
our  friendship.  I  had  many  opportunities  for  knowing  the 
sterling  character  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  and  her  quiet  deeds  of  charity 
among  the  poor.  Her  purse  was  always  open  to  help  the 
needy,  and  I  have  on  different  occasions  acted  as  her  almoner 
in  dealing  out  money  to  deserving  families  in  order  that  the 
home  might  not  be  broken  up. 

From  Miss  Perkins,  now  of  Concord,  Mass., 
formerly  associated  with  Mrs.  Lowell  in  the 
Working  Women's  Society: 

She  always  seemed  to  embody  the  spirit  Matthew  Arnold 
describes  in  the  beautiful  poem  "Rugby  Chapel,"  dedicated 
to  his  father's  memory.  Let  us  quicken  our  souls  with  the 
vision  of  her  "radiant  vigor,"  of  her  "thirst, 

"  Ardent,   unquenchable — 
Not  with  the  crowd  to  be  spent  in  an  eddy  of  pur- 
poseless dust. 
To  us  thou  wast  cheerful  and  helpful  and  firm." 

Mrs.  Lowell  had  truly  a  great  heart,  aflame  with  the  desire 
to  loose  the  bondman  and  bid  the  soul  go  free. 

Her  deepest  conviction,  it  seems  to  me,  and  the  secret  of  her 
sweet,  generous  wholesome  life,  was  of  the  value  of  the  human 
soul  and  of  its  inalienable  rights  to  everything  that  can  keep 
its  upward  and  onward  march.  She  valued  no  material  gain, 
no  material  possession,  except  as  containing  in  itself  added 
possibilities  for  noble  life  and  unreckoning  devoted  service, 
both  to  the  individual  and  to  the  community. 

She  was  built  on  the  great  lines  that  show  us  the  possi- 
bilities in  human  nature,  that  give  us  hope  in  work  for  the 
world.  The  very  sight  of  her  benignant,  loving  face,  as  she 
sat  on  the  platform  in  a  dimly  lighted  room,  up  flights  of 

[82] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

stairs,  among  the  handful  of  women  who  consulted  about  the 
necessities  of  working  women,  stirred  up  all  to  a  better  way  of 
doing  things,  to  a  finer  devotion  and  determination  to  keep 
out  the  note  of  injustice  or  bitterness. 

Her  greatest  value  to  us  was  her  own  intrinsic  beauty  of 
character  that  could  take  up  the  judging  and  redressing  of 
abuses,  or  the  correcting  mistaken  views  with  an  absence  of 
selfhood  that  kept  her  own  spirit  clean  and  gave  a  nobility  to 
her  work  which  was  our  example  and  strong  help. 

In  any  emergency,  early  or  late,  she  stood  ready  to  give 
counsel,  cheer  and  money  to  help,  each  with  equal  simplicity. 
She  had,  truly,  the  golden  touch — while  giving  freely  of  herself, 
she  drew  from  us  our  best. 

Some  of  the  beautiful  and  permanent  things  we  of  the 
Working  Women's  Society  hope  we  accomplished,  might  have 
come  later,  or  in  other  ways,  but  never  could  there  have  been 
more  of  a  high  devotion  and  even  exaltation,  than  our  work 
received  from  our  close  association  with  this  dear  friend  of  us 
all. 

It  was  natural,  perhaps,  that  some  of  the  most 
personal  expressions  of  loss  were  from  those  who 
had  worked  with  Mrs.  Lowell  in  connection  with 
the  Charity  Organization  Society.  Mrs.  William 
B.  Rice,  whose  friendship  began  in  war  times, 
and  who  was  associated  with  her  on  the  central  council 
of  that  society  and  in  the  State  Charities  Aid  Asso- 
ciation— wrote: 

I  have  known  many  women,  worked  with  many  in  charities. 
I  know  of  no  one  so  absolutely  disinterested,  self-forgetful, 
earnest,  single-hearted,  as  she.  She  seemed  never  to  be  even 
touched  by  the  ordinary  ambitions  of  men  and  women;  and 
as  for  her  ability — what  are  we  all  to  do  without  her  strength 
and  wisdom  ? 

Charles  D.  Kellogg,  the  first  secretary  of  the  New 
York  Charity  Organization  Society,  wrote  as  follows: 

[83] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Mrs.  Lowell  has  been  for  so  many  years  esteemed  by  us  for 
her  sterling  qualities  of  head  and  heart,  and  has  contributed 
so  pre-eminently  to  the  building  up  of  the  society  to  its  present 
high  position  in  the  confidence  of  the  public,  that  her  loss 
seems  well-nigh  irreparable.  My  association  with  her,  in  its 
preparatory  work,  antedates,  by  some  months,  the  inaugu- 
ration of  the  society.  Therefore  I  clearly  recall  not  only  her 
wonderful  far-sightedness  and  executive  ability,  but  I  have 
many  tender  memories  of  her  unselfish  devotion  to  duty,  her 
practical  sagacity,  her  loving  regard  for  the  highest  and  truest 
welfare  of  the  depressed  and  oppressed  alike,  and  the  tire- 
less and  self-forgetful  spirit  which  animated  the  varied  activ- 
ities of  the  beneficient  life  to  which  she  had  devoted  herself 
from  her  young  womanhood. 

Samuel  Macauley  Jackson,  a  fellow  member  of 
the  central  council  of  the  Charity  Organization 
Society,  wrote  in  these  words: 

Her  face  here  was  a  sad  one.  At  least  it  always  seemed 
so  to  me.  She  was  never  able  to  forget  the  crushing  sorrow 
of  her  young  womanhood.  But  we  who  could  not  enter  into 
that  sorrow,  only  wondered  at  its  intensity  and  its  duration, 
recognizing  that  it  had  sanctified  her  life.  She  was  by  her  sor- 
row able  to  serve  as  she  would  not  have  been  had  she  been 
the  joyful  wife  and  the  mother  of  many  children.  She  never 
knew  poverty;  she  was  a  patrician  in  birth  and  training  and 
property.  She  had  access  to  the  really  best  society,  and  had 
made  herself  a  prominent  place  among  the  volunteer  host  in 
the  army  of  philanthropists.  But  she  did  know  the  heart- 
ache, the  loneliness,  the  unsatisfied  gaze  into  the  sky,  the 
sickening  sense  of  desertion  which  are  harder  than  poverty 
to  bear.  The  unfortunate,  the  fallen,  the  tempted,  the  poor, 
would  have  felt  that  between  her  in  her  high  social  station, 
her  culture,  her  refinement,  and  themselves,  there  was  no 
common  experience,  were  it  not  for  her  widowhood. 
This  experience  of  sorrow,  though  the  sorrows  differed, 
they  had  in  common.  It  was  God's  way  to  fit  her  for  years  of 
loyal,  loving,  able  service  to  the  submerged  and  the  incompe- 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

tent  and  the  misdirected,  to  bring  her  first  to  shed  tears  over 
her  dead.  He  weaned  her  from  earth  that  He  might  open 
to  her  willing  feet  a  path  of  divine  service  in  imitation  of 
Jesus  Christ  who  bore  the  cross  before  He  wore  the  crown. 

Perhaps  equal  significance  belongs  to  the  ex- 
pressions of  opinion  from  those  who  worked  as 
members  of  the  staff.  Mrs.  Elizabeth  V.  H.  Man- 
sell,  now  superintendent  of  the  State  Training 
School  for  Girls,  at  Trenton,  N.  J.,  and  long  inves- 
tigating agent  of  the  New  York  Charity  Organi- 
zation Society,  wrote: 

No  one  can  say  more  than  we  who  worked  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  her,  knew  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  devotion  to  the  poor, 
or,  for  that  matter,  her  devotion  to  every  cause  that  was  for 
the  betterment  of  mankind.  She  has  said  that  she  wished 
she  had  sixty  lives  that  she  might  give  them  all  to  the  cause. 
She  gave  her  money  and  above  all  she  gave  herself,  that  the 
world  might  be  better  than  she  found  it. 

The  concrete  charity  work  which  Mrs.  Lowell 
contributed  in  what  is  one  of  the  largest  and  poor- 
est congested  districts  of  New  York,  was  spoken  of 
in  these  terms  by  Miss  Alice  M.  Decker,  district 
agent  of  the  Corlears  district: 

I  wish  I  were  able  to  write  you  all  the  happiness,  the  benefit 
and  the  improvement,  which  this  district,  as  a  whole,  owes  to 
Mrs.  Lowell.  I  think  she  seldom,  if  ever,  came  to  the  district 
office  without  stopping  on  her  way  to  give  a  word  of  encourage- 
ment or  reproof  to  either  a  city  employe,  a  child  on  its  way  to 
school,  or  to  do  anything  which  she  thought  would  be  beneficial 
by  interposition.  If  she  found  a  street  well  cleaned  and  the 
street  sweeper  doing  his  work  well,  his  number  was  taken  by 
her,  and  a  word  of  approval  sent  to  his  superintendent.  If 
he  were  not  doing  his  duty,  or  seemed  to  be  wasting  the  time 
which  belonged  to  others,  he  was  spoken  to  kindly,  but  his 
action  was  not  overlooked.  At  the  meetings  of  the  district 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

committee  the  same  idea  was  carried  out  to  the  minutest 
detail.  If  there  seemed  to  be  carelessness  or  inefficiency 
shown  in  the  records  before  they  reached  the  district  office,  it 
was  immediately  noticed.  To  me,  personally,  she  was  always 
the  kindest  and  truest  of  friends.  She  frequently  corrected 
me,  but  always  in  such  a  manner  that  her  correction  was 
preferable  to  another's  commendation.  Her  judgment  in 
considering  the  treatment  for  the  families  under  our  care  was 
thoroughly  wise  and  sound,  unless  the  person  in  destitution 
should  happen  to  call  at  the  office  while  she  was  there.  Then 
her  sympathy  and  love  always  outweighed  her  judgment. 
If  she  came  to  the  office  when  there  was  a  little  party  of  the 
neighborhood  people  she  was  most  intensely  interested,  and 
always  wished  to  give  them  immediate  relief. 

She  was  always  ready  to  encourage  and  help  those  who 
came  to  her  for  advice  and  counsel.  She  was  extremely 
careful  in  her  oversight  of  the  work  being  done  by  the  agent 
and  the  assistants  in  the  office,  and  her  approval  when  given 
did  more  to  encourage  good  effort  than  anything  else  could 
have  done.  Her  influence  was  felt  throughout  the  entire 
committee,  and  by  all  those  who  were  fortunate  enough  to 
occasionally  attend  the  weekly  meetings.  This  is  only  a  little 
of  what  I  would  like  to  say,  but  I  hope  her  influence  still  may 
help  someone  else,  as  it  has  me. 

At  one  of  the  sessions  of  the  New  York  State  Con- 
ference of  Charities  and  Correction,  held  in  New 
York,  November  16,  1905,  Miss  Louisa  Lee  Schuy- 
ler,  in  seconding  a  resolution  on  Mrs.  Lowell's  death, 
spoke  of  finding  herself  traveling  back  in  thought 
over  many  years  to  the  time  when,  in  1872,  Mrs. 
Lowell  first  took  part  in  public  charitable  work. 
Of  this  she  said: 

It  was  as  a  member  of  the  Richmond  County  visiting  com- 
mittee of  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association,  her  duty  being  to 
visit  the  poorhouse  not  far  from  her  home  on  Staten  Island, 
that  she  at  once  made  her  influence  felt  in  behalf  of  these  poor 

[  86  ] 


IN  MEMORIAM  .-JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

people.  And  there  her  wonderful  power  of  sympathy  showed 
itself,  a  sympathy  in  the  lives  of  those  people  as  individuals 
which  comprised  their  past,  their  present,  and  their  future. 
Mrs.  Lowell  at  once  asked  what,  in  their  lives,  had  brought 
those  men  and  women  there,  and,  when  they  told  her,  she 
felt  that  she  could  help  them  better  for  this  knowledge,  could 
help  others  too,  often  saving  them  from  pauperism  by  a  help- 
ful hand  extended  at  a  critical  moment.  And  this  she  did — 
then  and  throughout  her  life. 

A  few  years  later,  in  1876,  Mrs.  Lowell,  as  member  of  the 
central  body  of  the  association,  made  one  of  the  first  of  those 
very  able  reports  with  which,  in  later  years,  we  have  all  become 
familiar.  It  was  upon  vagrancy  and  outdoor  relief,  and  was 
read  at  a  meeting  of  the  association  at  which  Governor  Tilden 
was  present.  He  at  once  recognized  its  ability  and  deter- 
mined, if  possible,  to  secure  the  services  of  Mrs.  Lowell  for  the 
state.  He  wished  to  appoint  her  a  commissioner  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities.  At  that  time,  in  this  state,  no  woman 
had  ever  been  appointed  a  member  of  an  official  state  board, 
and  the  very  proposition  was  a  new  departure.  I  remem- 
ber how  Theodore  Roosevelt,  then  a  member  of  the  State 
Board  of  Charities,  came  to  me  from  Governor  Tilden  to  talk 
it  over.  (I  am  speaking  of  the  father  of  our  president,  my 
contemporary  and  personal  friend.)  I  had  known  Mrs. 
Lowell  from  her  girlhood;  he  was  not  yet  acquainted  with  her. 
Well — we  talked  it  over,  with  the  result  that  I  was  to  ask  Mrs. 
Lowell  if  she  would  accept,  and,  should  she  consent,  Mr.  Roose- 
velt was  to  see  the  leading  state  senators  to  ask  if  the  nomi- 
nation of  a  woman  to  such  a  position  would  be  confirmed. 
I  remember  so  well  my  interview  with  Mrs.  Lowell  the  argu- 
ments I  turned  over  in  my  mind  on  the  Staten  Island  ferry- 
boat to  induce  her  to  look  upon  the  proposition,  the  sweet 
smile  and  friendly  greeting  of  the  young  widow  in  simple  black 
dress.  I  stated  the  object  of  my  visit,  and  was  proceeding  to 
argue  why  it  was  so  important  that  she  should  consider  it,  when 
she  said  very  quietly;  "If  the  governor  and  the  senate  wish 
to  appoint  me,  I  will  gladly  serve."  "  Do  you  wish  to  think 
it  over  ?"  I  asked.  "No,"  she  said,  "  I  know  what  the  work 
of  the  board  is.  I  shall  try  to  do  it."  And  this  was  the 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

beginning  of  her  very  able  service  of  over  thirteen  years  as 
commissioner  of  the  New  York  State  Board  of  Charities.  I 
need  not  add  that  her  nomination  was  confirmed  unanimously 
by  the  senate,  nor  that  she  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  served  together 
most  efficiently  on  the  board,  as  colleagues  and  friends,  until 
his  death. 

In  speaking  of  a  possible  memorial,  Miss  Schuy- 
ler  said: 

Possiby  a  small  city  park,  as  a  playground  for  the  children 
of  one  of  the  congested  districts  of  our  city,  to  be  named  after 
Mrs.  Lowell,  might  be  considered;  and  within  it  a  fountain, 
symbolical,  in  its  clear  leaping  waters,  of  purity  and  sweetness 
and  light,  of  aspiration  and  continuity  of  purpose. 

It  is  thus  I  think  of  our  friend — a  woman  one  cannot  de- 
scribe, a  woman  to  be  loved  and  reverenced.  Her  influence 
for  good  has  left  an  impression  upon  our  city  and  state  which 
no  other  woman  has  ever  approached. 

In  Boston  the  Symphony  Concert  of  October  27, 
1905,  was  in  memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell. 

In  relation  to  this  memorial,  Mr.  Higginson,*  a 
lifelong  friend  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  said  in  a  letter  to  a 
friend:  "What  can  we  add  to  her  memory?  The 
concert  here  was  an  expression  of  our  feeling. 

"It  lay  within  my  power  to  make  a  programme 
of  a  concert  in  our  regular  season.  Therefore,  I 
chose  Schubert's  far-reaching  Unfinished  Symphony, 
and  Beethoven's  Heroic  Symphony  as  fitted  for  her — 
the  lovely  and  loving  side  and  the  heroic  side 
of  her  life — the  best  one  can  say  in  music  for  any 
one — and  I  chose  these  because  of  our  deep  sympa- 
thy with  her  work,  and  great  admiration  for  it  and 

*  Mr.  Higginson  is  the  founder  of  the  symphony  concerts,  and  Colonel 
Lowell  was  one  of  the  friends  whom  he  commemorated  in  his  gift  of  the 
"Soldiers'  Field"  to  Harvard  College. 

[88] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

for  her,  the  dear  friend,  and  the  wife  of  a  dear  friend, 
who  had  given  his  strength  and  life  for  his  country's 
freedom  from  an  inherited  sin. 

"He  was  enrolled  as  a  great  public  servant  in 
time  of  need,  and  she  is  enrolled  equally  as  the 
same. 

"She  has  blessed  many,  many  poor  and  rich 
people,  and  has  proved  her  full  belief  in  the  service 
of  God  and  man/' 


The  following  minute  written,  it  is  understood 
by  Mrs.  William  H.  SchiefTelin,  was  adopted  Nov- 
ember 7,  1905,  by  the  Women's  Auxiliary  of  the 
New  York  Civil  Service  Reform  Association: 

In  the  death  of  Mrs.  Lowell  the  Women's  Auxiliary  to  the 
Civil  Service  Reform  Association  has  lost  its  most  loyal  and 
distinguished  member. 

In  1894  Mr.  Schurz  requested  Mrs.  Lowell  to  organize  the 
auxiliary.  This  she  undertook,  but  declined  to  be  the  presi- 
dent, modestly  protesting  that  people  were  tired  of  seeing  her 
name.  She  promised,  however,  to  do  the  work,  and  this 
promise  she  bravely  kept,  coming  with  faithful  regularity  to 
all  the  meetings,  disregarding  the  weather  or  her  own  fatigue, 
until  last  winter,  when  finally  her  health  gave  way. 

To  these  meetings  Mrs.  Lowell  brought  ideas  and  suggestions, 
which  she  presented  with  ever  fresh  enthusiasm,  impressing 
upon  her  listeners  the  belief  that  to  give  much  of  one's  time 
to  the  extension  of  the  merit  system  was  one  of  the  chief  duties 
in  life. 

In  studying  the  story  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  life  from  the  time 
when  her  young  husband  and  brother  were  killed  in  the  Civil 
War — when  she  consecrated  her  life  to  the  cause  of  humanity 
— we  are  thrilled  at  the  revelation  of  the  purity  and  nobil- 
ity of  her  character.  Mrs.  Lowell's  absolute  abnegation  of 
self,  her  unique  unworldiness,  her  tender  sympathy  for  the 
neglected  and  suffering,  her  passionate  desire  to  help  those 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

longing  and  struggling  for  liberty  and  independence,  her 
burning  indignation  against  all  that  was  unworthy  and  untrue, 
her  patriotism  and  civic  pride,  her  cheerfulness,  helpfulness, 
and  especially  her  humility,  show  a  nature  of  surpassing  purity 
and  strength,  a  pattern  not  to  women  alone,  but  to  all  Ameri- 
cans. 

We  who  have  been  associated  with  Mrs.  Lowell  know  that 
her  place  cannot  be  filled;  for  we  have  lost  the  inspiration 
of  our  leader  and  our  dear  friend.  We  sorrow  for  her,  but 
we  can  also  pray  that  our  Father  who  has  called  her  may 
awaken  in  our  hearts  the  high  desire  to  be  more  like  her,  and  to 
follow  her  beautiful  example. 

Resolutions  were  adopted  also  by  the  Women's 
Auxiliary  to  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Association 
of  Massachusetts,  on  October  24,  1905. 


The  New  York  Evening  Post  for  November  14, 
1905,  published  the  following  editorial: 

New  York  has  seen  few  more  noteworthy  and  fitting  cele- 
brations of  civic  virtue  and  service  than  last  night's  meeting 
in  honor  of  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell.  For  forty  years  she 
consecrated  herself  to  the  needs  of  every  class  in  this  commu- 
nity. Even  those  who  deemed  themselves  familiar  with 
Mrs.  Lowell's  achievements  were  astounded,  as  speaker  after 
speaker  rehearsed  not  merely  her  self-sacrifice,  but  the  actual 
results  of  her  work.  In  her  own  person  she  refuted  the  idea 
that  women  cannot  be  as  practical  as  men,  when  given  offices 
of  responsibility;  and  her  success  as  a  state  commissioner  of 
charities  and  in  private  associations  opened  wide  a  door  to 
useful  public  service  for  hundreds  of  her  sex.  Hence  it  is  but 
natural  that  the  meeting  last  night  should  have  demanded  a 
memorial,  not  so  much  to  glorify  her,  who  put  aside  all  the 
temptations  of  high  social  position  and  of  ample  means,  as  to 
commemorate  her  example  to  coming  generations — particu- 
larly those  born  to  wealth  and  position.  Mr.  Riis's  suggestion 

[90] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

that  one  of  the  small  city  parks  be  named  after  Mrs.  Lowell 
is  admirable,  but  the  memorial  need  not  stop  there.  Still  other 
ways  in  connection  with  charitable  work  suggest  themselves — 
among  them  the  strengthening  of  the  Charity  Organization 
Society — for  commemorating  one  who  uncomplainingly  gave 
to  her  country  first  husband,  next  brother,  and  then  herself. 

At  the  eleventh  annual  meeting  of  the  New  York 
State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  the  following 
resolution  was  adopted  upon  motion  of  Mrs.  Edward 
A.  Greeley,  general  federation  secretary: 

When  Time  turns  his  hour-glass  suddenly  and  surely  with 
reluctance,  for  a  noble  woman  whose  sands  of  life  were  golden 
in  their  value  to  other  lives,  it  is  wise  that  before  the  last 
glistening  grains  fade  upon  our  sight  we  pause  to  mark  their 
passing. 

As  the  wise,  untiring  chairman  for  civil  service  reform  in 
the  New  York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  Mrs. 
Charles  Russell  Lowell,  nee  Josephine  Shaw,  of  Boston,  was 
devoted  to  her  voluntary  task  with  her  committee,  and  almost 
the  last  strokes  of  her  busy  pen  were  in  behalf  of  her  federa- 
tion work.  The  report  just  read  represents  not  only  the 
interest  and  activity  for  the  year;  it  embodies  the  conscien- 
tious energy  of  her  whole  faithful,  heroic  life. 

Born  into  an  illustrious  family,  connected  in  Boston,  where 
her  brother,  Colonel  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  is  honored  by  a 
monument  on  the  historic  Common  at  Beacon  Hill,  married 
to  General  Charles  R.  Lowell,  who  also  distinguished  himself 
in  our  Civil  War,  Mrs.  Lowell  bravely  resigned  the  claims  and 
attractions  of  her  social  life  to  consecrate  herself  to  the  assist- 
ance of  others  beyond  the  home  circle. 

She  was  the  organizer  and  moving  spirit  of  the  great  Sani- 
tary Fair,  held  in  New  York  in  the  fierce  strain  on  hearts  and 
homes  during  the  battle  time  of  1863. 

When  peace  reigned  once  more,  she  turned  to  develop,  with 
the  same  patient,  characteristic  attention  as  though  still  ani- 
mated with  the  enthusiasm  of  martial  service,  the  equal  need 

[9'  ] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

for  our  Charity  Organization  Society.  Yet,  again,  when  a 
leading  clergyman  appealed  for  some  woman  in  the  dignified 
seclusion  of  her  private  life  to  come  forth  and  bravely  lead 
in  a  crusade  for  the  city's  moral  welfare,  Mrs.  Lowell  stepped 
unhesitatingly  to  the  forefront  and  gave  freely  of  her  time, 
means,  and  counsel. 

Her  last  work  was  in  the  broad  ideal  which  goes  beyond  our 
municipal  boundary,  and  seeks  to  educate  our  entire  country 
by  a  widespread  civil  service  reform.  The  social  element  of 
women's  clubs  had  never  attracted  Mrs.  Lowell,  but,  when  her 
clear  perception  saw  the  collective  force  of  so  many  thousand 
women,  she  promptly  allied  herself  with  them,  and  became 
of  right  a  leader  among  women.  She  aimed  for  the  highest 
good  of  her  country  and  humanity.  Her  name  is  a  glory  to 
both. 


The  Boston  Evening  Transcript  published  the 
following  account  of  the  memorial  concert  for  Mrs. 
Lowell : 

It  was  an  exceptional  concert  that  the  Symphony  Orchestra 
gave  yesterday  afternoon  in  Symphony  Hall,  and  with  two 
numbers  of  its  programme  the  reviewer  in  the  ordinary  prac- 
tice of  his  calling  has  little,  under  the  circumstances,  to  do. 
The  concert  began  with  Schubert's  Unfinished  Symphony.  It 
included  Beethoven's  Heroic  Symphony.  It  ended  with 
Beethoven's  Dvorak's  concerto  for  violincello,  in  which  Mr. 
Warnke,  the  new  principal  'cellist  of  the  band,  made  his  first 
appearance  apart  from  it.  The  concerto  and  the  new  virtuoso 
are  the  reviewer's  concern,  and  we  shall  write  of  them  at  length 
on  Monday.  The  two  symphonies  were  not  played,  as  they 
usually  are,  as  so  much  absolute  music  for  our  pleasure.  They 
were  played  at  Mr.  Higginson's  request  to  recall  and  to  honor 
the  memory  of  Mrs.  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell,  who  died  in  New 
York  not  many  weeks  ago.  Behind,  but  still  bright,  were 
the  memories  of  the  two  families  whose  name  she  bore,  and, 
brightest  of  all,  those  of  both  houses  who  gave  their  lives 
in  Civil  War.  Our  finest  piece  of  sculpture  bears  daily  witness 

[92] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

to  one  of  them.     Yesterday  it  fell  to  another  art,  in  the  par- 
ticular name  of  sister  or  of  wife,  to  honor  them  all. 

There  was  the  art  of  music  at  its  fullest  and  finest  in  the 
concert.  Who  shall  write  new  praise  now  of  the  two  sympho- 
nies ?  But  neither  they  nor  the  art  that  they  incarnate  were 
serving  their  usual  purpose.  Yesterday  it  was  for  the"  Eroica" 
symphony  in  all  its  glorified  voices,  to  recall  with  the  trans- 
figuring power  of  beautiful  sound  a  noble  life  lived  well,  a 
life  that  ran  rich  and  full  and  that  gave  lavishly  of  its  rich- 
ness and  fullness.  It  was  for  that  same  power  of  sound  to 
recall  a  little  of  the  stress  and  suffering  in  which  some  of  that 
life  was  lived  as  it  gave  to  the  state  those  that  it  held  dearest. 
It  was  most  of  all  for  it  to  publish  a  solemn  grief  and  to  exalt 
an  illustrious  memory.  Such  mourning  and  such  proclama- 
tions were  for  it  and  for  Beethoven.  More  intimate  and 
more  lyric  were  the  passion  and  beauty  of  Schubert's  frag- 
ment. Here  was  the  passionate  longing  that  is  music's 
peculiar  voice,  and  passionate  regret,  and  side  by  side  with 
them  the  lyric  beauty  that  soothes  and  softens.  The  "  Eroica" 
symphony  had  been  a  stately  mourning.  The  unfinished 
symphony  was  as  the  voice  of  personal  griefs.  Beethoven's 
music  proclamed  a  life  well  fought  and  an  exalted  memory. 
In  Schubert's  played  the  light  of  the  ideal  for  which  that  life 
was  lived,  and  the  light  that  will  suffuse  the  memory  of  it  for 
them  that  cherish  it.  In  Schubert  were  the  human  cry  and 
the  human  solace.  A  woman's  memory  asked  his  music. 
Beethoven's  was  for  her,  and  both  her  houses,  and  all  her 
heroes.  H.  F.  P. 


The  Independent  for  October  20,  1905,  published 
the  following: 

In  the  death  of  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell  last  week  the  Uni- 
ted States  loses  one  of  its  noblest  and  greatest  women.  For 
forty  years  there  has  been  nobody  in  New  York  whose  chari- 
table and  social  reform  effort  has  resulted  in  greater  and  more 
lasting  achievement  than  hers.  Her  monument  is  built  in 
the  Charity  Organization  Society,  which  she  founded  twenty- 

[93] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

three  years  ago,  in  the  constitutions  and  statutes  of  New 
York,  in  the  successful  fight  for  civil  service  reform,  in  her 
impress  on  the  labor  movement,  on  the  college  settlements, 
and  in  fact  on  every  good  endeavor  for  civic  reform.  Her 
beloved  young  husband,  Charles  Russell  Lowell,  was  killed 
in  the  Civil  War  at  Cedar  Creek  her  patriot  brother,  Robert 
Gould  Shaw,  perished  at  Fort  Wagner,  at  the  head  of  his 
Negro  regiment,  and  was  buried  with  them.  No  wonder, 
with  the  example  of  two  such  sacrifices  to  treasure  in  her 
memory,  Mrs.  Lowell  became  what  she  was.  Her  work  will 
remain. 

On  April  12,  1906,  the  Women's  Municipal  League  of  New 
York,  held  a  meeting  in  memory  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  its  founder. 
Miss  Chanler,  president  of  the  League,  was  in  the  chair  and 
made  the  opening  address.  Miss  Schuyler  spoke  of  Mrs. 
Lowell's  work  for  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association;  Mrs. 
Isabel  C.  Barrows,  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York;  Miss 
Kate  Bond,  the  Charity  Organization  Society;  Miss  Grace  H. 
Dodge,  the  peace  movement;  Miss  Lillian  D.  Wald,  the  East 
Side  Relief  Work  Committee;  Dr.  Jane  E.  Robbins,the  Settle- 
ments; Mrs.  William  H.  Schieffelin,  the  Women's  Auxiliary  of 
the  New  York  Civil  Service  Reform  Association;  and  Mrs. 
Frederick  Nathan,  the  Consumers'  League. 


[94] 


IN    MEMORIAM 
JOSEPHINE    SHAW    LOWELL 


A  FEW  TYPICAL  SELECTIONS  FROM  MRS. 

LOWELL'S  OFFICIAL  REPORTS  AND 

WRITINGS 


I  OBJECT  to  the  term  "dependent  classes,"  unless  in  speak- 
ing of  the  insane.    That  such  a  class,  not  included  among 
the  insane,  does  exist  among  us  is  a  fact;  in  more  than  one 
county  of  this  great  rich  state,  there  are  families,  as  you 
know,  who  for  five  generations  have  been  more  or  less  de- 
pendent on  their  fellow  citizens,  and  such  families  do  consti- 
tute a  class;  but  yet  I  protest  against  the  use  of  this  phrase 
in  a  way  to  suggest  that  the  existence  of  such  a  class  should 
be  recognized  except  to  be  abolished. 

That  there  will  always  be  persons  who  must  be  helped, 

individuals  who  must  depend  on  public  relief  or  on  private 

charity  for  maintenance,  is  true,  but  it  is  a  disgrace  to  any 

community  to  have  a  dependent  class,  and  the  fact  of  its 

existence  is  a  proof  that  the  community  has  done  its  duty 

neither  to  those  who  compose  it  nor  to  those  who  maintain  it. 

— From  Out-Door  Relief  (A  paper  read  at  the  State 

Convention  of  Superintendents  of  the  Poor,  held  at 

Lockport,  N.  Y.,  August,   1890.) 


To  the  Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction: 

GENTLEMEN — You  are  doubtless  as  painfully  aware  as  it  is 
possible  for  any  one  to  be  of  the  incompetency  and  of  the  graver 
moral  deficiencies  of  many  of  the  subordinates  who  have  been 
appointed  to  fill  places  in  the  charitable  institutions  under 

[95] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

your  charge.  The  more  thoroughly  we  become  acquainted 
with  the  management  of  these  institutions,  the  more  firmly  are 
we  convinced  that  under  the  present  system  of  making  appoint- 
ments, an  efficient  and  proper  administration  of  them  is 
impossible.  So  long  as  political  pressure  is  allowed  to  have 
weight  with  you  in  the  choice  of  employe's,  so  long  will  the 
charitable  institutions  of  the  city  be  badly  managed. 

— Copy  of  letter  to  the  Commissioners  of  Public  Chari- 
ties and  Correction,  New  York  City,  April  24,  1877, 
included  in  communication  to  Smith  Ely,  Mayor, 
in  regard  to  the  official  charities  of  the  City. 


March  5,  1879. 
To  ibe  Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction: 

GENTLEMEN — The  more  I  see  of  the  attendants  in  the  Luna- 
tic Asylum  on  Blackwell's  Island,  the  more  am  I  impressed  by 
their  sad  deficiency  in  judgment  and  inadequate  acquaintance 
with  their  profession.  I  do  not  mean  that  they  are  generally 
careless  or  unfaithful.  I  see  no  particular  sign  of  that  in  the 
short  visits  I  am  able  to  make  at  the  asylum,  but  I  do  feel 
most  painfully  that  they  lack  discretion  and  that  even  many 
of  those  who  have  experience  are  not  competent  to  fulfil  the 
duties  of  their  office.  Yesterday  one  nurse  assured  me 
repeatedly,  in  the  presence  of  a  patient,  that  the  latter  was 
not  crazy,  but  that  she  had  a  fearful  temper;  that  she  wished 
to  kill  people,  and  that  she  could  escape  from  any  restraint 
put  on  her.  Such  statements,  of  course,  serve  simply  to 
incite  the  patient  to  violence.  She  naturally  has  a  pride  in 
being  unmanageable  and  wishes  to  keep  up  the  character 
given  to  her.  I  do  not  complain  of  the  nurse,  for  I  do  not 
think  it  is  her  fault;  she  has  never  been  taught.  I  only 
mention  the  fact  as  typical  and  to  show  what  I  mean. 

— Letter  included  in  Mrs.  Lowell's  report  upon  the 
Conditions  and  Needs  of  the  Insane  of  New  York 
City,  to  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  January,  1881. 

[96] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

Such  expenditure  is  not  extravagance  in  money,  but  I 
believe  there  is  great  extravagance  in  the  management  of  the 
Department  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction,  because  the 
whole  tendency  of  the  system  under  which  it  it  governed,  is, 
as  I  have  said,  to  encourage  the  increase  of  pauperism,  in- 
sanity and  crime. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  of  this  system,  is  the  want 
of  any  large  aim  in  the  conduct  of  the  institutions.  Many 
facilities  exist  in  this  city  for  adopting  preventive  and  reforma- 
tory systems,  but  the  only  ambition  in  the  department  seems 
to  be  to  receive  all  who  come,  to  take  care  of  them  as  well  as 
may  be  at  the  lowest  possible  rate,  and  to  prevent  any  serious 
scandals;  but  to  check  the  swelling  tide  of  pauperism,  to 
reform  the  prisoners,  to  teach  the  idle  habits  of  industry,  to  cure 
the  insane,  are  not  the  objects  set  before  themselves  or  their 
subordinates,  by  the  Commissioners  of  Public  Charities  and 
Correction. 

The  mere  fact  of  giving  to  subordinate  officials  the  assurance 
that  good  conduct  should  be  rewarded  by  permanence  of  posi- 
tion, and  a  gradually  increasing  rate  of  salary,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  training  schools  for  the  attendants  at  the  insane 
asylums,  would  go  far  to  raise  the  character  of  the  institutions 
by  raising  that  of  the  officials. 

— Report  on  the  Public  Charities  of  New  York  City, 
to  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  January,  1882. 


My  object  in  compiling  this  book  is  to  present  an  account  of 
some  of  the  methods  by  which  industrial  peace  has  been 
sought  and  attained  in  many  large  industries,  both  in  Europe 
and  in  this  country,  and  to  hold  up  to  the  gratitude  and  respect 
of  their  fellow  employers  and  fellow  workmen  the  achievements 
of  the  men  who  have  by  these  methods  already  brought  a  bless- 
ing to  thousands,  and  broken  a  path  which  all  may  now  follow. 

Actuated  by  the  highest  sense  of  justice  and  love  of  right, 
they  have  been  so  happy  as  to  be  able  to  put  their  princi- 
ples into  practice  and  to  watch  the  successful  results  of  their 

[97] 


IN  MEMORIAM  :  JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL 

efforts,  and  they  have  from  time  to  time  published  some 
account  of  what  they  have  done.     It  is  from  their  own  writings 
that  I  have  collected  the  materials  I  have  used. 
I  offer  them  my  own  most  earnest  gratitude. 

JOSEPHINE  SHAW  LOWELL. 
March  5,  1893. 

— Dedication  of  Industrial  Arbitration  and  Conciliation. 


No  great  political  reform  wrought  in  America  represents 
the  triumph  of  public  opinion  as  docs  this.  Its  extension 
must  depend  on  the  same  force,  and  there  are  branches  of 
high  importance,  in  both  state  and  nation,  to  which  it  does 
not  yet  apply.  We  should  help  by  every  means  within  our 
power,  and  particularly  through  education,  to  create  a  public 
opinion  so  much  stronger  that  the  principle  will  be  estab- 
lished in  every  place  in  v/hich  it  does  not  now  prevail. 

— Report  as  chairman  of  committee  on  civil  service  re- 
form, nth  annual  meeting  of  the  New  York  State 
Federation  of  Labor,  October  3o-November  3,  1905. 
This  report  represents  the  last  public  work  of  the 
chairman,  whose  death  occurred  two  weeks  before  it 
was  submitted. 


PARTIAL  LIST  OF 
MRS.  LOWELL'S  WRITINGS  * 

REPORT  ON  NEW  YORK  JUVENILE  GUARDIAN  SOCIETY  as  a 
member  of  S.  B.  of  C,  the  other  members  of  the  committee 
being  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Henry  L.  Hoguet.  1878. 

COMMUNICATION  TO  HON.  SMITH  ELY,  MAYOR,  IN  REGARD 
TO  THE  OFFICIAL  CHARITIES  OF  THE  CITY,  the  other  members 
of  the  committee  being  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Edward  C. 
Donnelly.  1878. 

COMMUNICATION  TO  BOARD  OF  ESTIMATE  AND  APPORTION- 
MENT IN  REGARD  TO  APPROPRIATION  DEPARTMENT  OF  PUBLIC 
CHARITIES,  the  other  member  of  the  committee  being  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt.  1878. 

REPORT  AS  COMMISSIONER  ON  PUBLIC  CHARITIES  OF  NEW 
YORK  CITY  with  Edward  C.  Donnelly.  1879. 

ONE  MEANS  OF  PREVENTING  PAUPERISM.  (Plea  for  a 
State  Reformatory  for  Women.)  N.  C.  C.  C.  1879. 

REPORT  ON  PUBLIC  CHARITIES  OF  NEW  YORK  to  S.  B.  of  C. 
1879  and  1880. 

REFORMATORIES  FOR  WOMEN.     1880. 

INSTITUTIONS  FOR  DEAF  AND  DUMB.  Report  to  S.  B.  of  C. 
1882. 

CONDITIONS  AND  NEEDS  OF  THE  INSANE  OF  NEW  YORK  CITY. 
Report  to  S.  B.  of  C.  1882. 

BETTER  SYSTEM  OF  CHARITIES  AND  CORRECTION  FOR  CITIES. 
N.  C.  C  C.  1881. 

OUTDOOR  RELIEF.     Report  to  S.  B.  of  C.     1882. 

*  Abbreviations— S.  B.  of  C. — State  Board  of  Charities  ;  N.  C.  C.  C.— 
Proceedings  of  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Corrections  ;  C.  O.  S. 
— Charity  Organization  Society. 

[99] 


PARTIAL  LIST  OF  MRS.  LOWELL'S  WRITINGS 

REPORT  ON  IDIOTS  to  S.  B.  of  C,  the  other  member  of  the 
committee  being  J.  C.  Devereux.  1883, 

REPORTS  ON  DEAF  AND  DUMB  to  S.  B.  of  C,  the  other  mem- 
ber of  the  committee  being  J.  C.  Devereux.  1883,  1884. 

INSANE  AND  LUNATIC  ASYLUMS  OF  NEW  YORK  CITY.  Re- 
port toS.  B.  of  C.  1883. 

REPORT  ON  ORGANIZATION  AND  WORK  OF  CHARITY  ORGAN- 
IZATION SOCIETY  OF  THE  CITY  OF  NEW  YORK.  1884. 

PUBLIC  RELIEF  AND  PRIVATE  CHARITY.  Published  by 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1884. 

OUTDOOR  RELIEF.  Report  to  S.  B.  of  C.,  the  other  member 
of  the  committee  being  Ripley  Ropes.  1884. 

INSTITUTIONS  FOR  THE  CARE  of  DESTITUTE  CHILDREN. 
Report  to  S.  B.  of  C.  1886. 

REPORT  ON  REFORMATORIES  to  S.  B.  of  C.  Other  members 
of  the  committee  being  William  R.  Stewart  and  Robert 
McCarthy.  1887. 

PUBLIC  CHARITIES  OF  NEW  YORK  CITY.  Report  to  S.  B. 
of  C.  1887. 

ADAPTABILITY  OF  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  TO  SMALL  COM- 
MUNITIES. N.  C.  C.  C.  1887. 

DEPARTMENT  OF  PUBLIC  CHARITIES  AND  CORRECTIONS 
Report  to  S.  B.  of  C.  1888. 

REPORT  ON  WORKHOUSE  TO  S.  B.  OF  C.     1888. 

REPORT  ON  RANDALL'S  ISLAND  SCHOOLS  FOR  DEFECTIVE 
CHILDREN  TO  S.  B.  OF  C.  1888. 

OUTDOOR  RELIEF.     Report  to  S.  B.  of  C.     1890. 

INDUSTRIAL  ARBITRATION  AND  CONCILIATION.  Published 
by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1894. 

POVERTY  AND  ITS  RELIEF.  Methods  possible  in  the  City  of 
New  York.  N.  C.  C.  C.  1895. 

LABOR  ORGANIZATION  AS  AFFECTED  BY  LAW.  First  number 
of  Charities  Review,  November,  1891. 


PARTIAL  LIST  OF  MRS.  LOWELL'S  WRITINGS 

THE  DARKEST  ENGLAND  SOCIAL  SCHEME.  Brief  review 
of  the  first  year's  work.  Charities  Review,  March,  1892. 

INDUSTRIAL    PEACE.     Charities   Review,   January,    1893. 

CHAPTER  OF  INDUSTRIAL  HISTORY;  an  account  of  two  coal 
mines  in  Belgium.  Charities  Review,  May,  1893. 

"FELIX  QUI  CAUSUM  RERUM  COGNOVIT;"  further  review 
of  the  Darkest  England  scheme.  Charities  Review,  June  ,1893. 

FIVE  MONTHS  WORK  FOR  THE  UNEMPLOYED  IN  NEW  YORK 
CITY.  Charities  Review,  May,  1894. 

THE  COAL  STRIKE  of  1894.  Charities  Review,  November,  1894. 

POVERTY  AND  ITS  RELIEF.  Methods  possible  in  the  City 
of  New  York.  N.  C.  C.  C.  1895. 

CHARITY  PROBLEMS.     Charities  Review,  January,    1896. 

THE  TRUE  AIM  OF  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION  SOCIETIES. 
Forum,  June,  1896. 

CONSUMERS  LEAGUES.  An  article  published  by  the  Christ- 
ian Social  Union,  Boston.  1898. 

CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM.    N.  C.  C.  C.     1898. 

EVILS  OF  INVESTIGATION  AND  RELIEF.    C.  O.  S.  1898. 

OUTDOOR  RELIEF  IN  COAL.  Committee  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society,  the  other  members  being  Prof.  Rich- 
mond Mayo-Smith  and  F.  W.  Holls.  Annual  report  of  C.  O.  S. 
1899. 

LETTER  ON  EMERGENCY  RELIEF  FUNDS,  signed  also  by 
Miss  Wald  and  Miss  Williams.  Charities,  February  25,  1899. 

REPORT  OF  COMMITTEE  ON  DISTRICT  WORK.  C.  O.  S. 
Mrs.  Lowell,  chairman.  1899. 

ENGLAND  OF  1777 — AMERICA  OF  1904 — A  comparison  of 
conditions  in  jails.  Charities,  April  9,  1904. 

REPORT  OF  COMMITTEE  ON  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM.  New 
York  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs.  Mrs.  Lowell  chair- 
man. 1905.  Federation  Bulletin.  January,  1906. 

[101] 


-In  memo  ri  an 


:   Josephine 


HV28 
iSK- 


Shaw  Lowell 


M187139 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


